Despite Deadly U.S. Neglect, WHO Members Choose Health and Justice
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Member States of the World Health Organization adopted the pandemic agreement, to prepare for and respond to future disease outbreaks in the wake of Covid-19’s deadly inequity. Officially, the United States was not present and did not vote. In video remarks, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said countries should join the U.S. in working outside WHO.
This is only the second international legal instrument adopted under Article 19 of the WHO Constitution, after the 2003 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
Public Citizen Access to Medicines Director Peter Maybarduk, who is in Geneva for the World Health Assembly, issued the following statement:
“WHO members chose health and justice today, despite RFK’s cheap insult, the reckless U.S. withdrawal and Trump’s deadly neglect of infectious disease threats.
“The pandemic agreement supports sharing not only medicines but also medical technology. This was essential to resolving differences between developing and wealthy countries. If the U.S. had applied these same terms aggressively early in the Covid pandemic, the NIH-Moderna vaccine could have been made affordable and timely available to people in rich and poor countries alike, saving tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives.
“But the benefits of the agreement won’t be automatic and could be anemic. Saving lives under the agreement depends on states taking initiative, which is far from guaranteed. Solving vaccine access will require much greater ambition and funding, from all states.
“The world moved forward without the United States today. Trump’s devastating cuts cast a shadow on the talks, and are on course to cost millions of lives, including the lives of Americans made more vulnerable to infectious disease.
“Still, countries came together amidst scarcity to commit themselves to a more just and healthy world, and that is worth celebrating.”