Texts Show Trump’s Deals with African States Undermine WHO Equity Bargain, Plans for Sharing Virus Samples
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Trump administration’s terms for sharing pathogen information in health deals with African states are unfair and threaten to undermine the core equity bargain of the WHO Pandemic Agreement negotiations, according to a Public Citizen analysis of seven newly released State Department texts.
The terms would require African states to share viral samples and pathogen information with the U.S. and allow the U.S. to share that information with drugmakers, but provide no credible expectation of benefits in return or access to medical tools developed from those samples. This undercuts the federated proposal for viral sharing with access benefits put forward this month at WHO negotiations by the Africa+ Group, which includes all countries for which bilateral specimen agreements are available.
The State Department is signing the specimen deals in connection with foreign aid funding agreements pursuant to its “America First Global Health Strategy,” which are intended to restore some of the health aid decimated by Trump administration cuts last year. A template specimen sharing agreement was published in late 2025. This is the first analysis of specimen sharing agreements that have been signed, showing what terms countries were able to negotiate.
The U.S. is entering these bilateral specimen agreements separate from ongoing negotiations for a multilateral pathogen access and benefit sharing system – the linchpin of the recently adopted WHO Pandemic Agreement. The system aims to establish a mechanism to ensure equitable access to health tools in future pandemics.
“Trump is exploiting African states’ urgent need to restore lifesaving health aid and pushing them to give up a shot at real lifesaving medical access and equity, for which so many people have worked, bled, and died,” said Peter Maybarduk, Access to Medicines director for Public Citizen. “African states at WHO have led the way in efforts to secure a fair deal and cooperation to fight pandemics, but individually, these states are vulnerable to Trump’s threats.”
The Trump bilateral deals differ from country to country in terms of recognition of authorship and contribution to publications, the right to be informed when specimen data have been shared with private companies, and the number of non-government entities with whom specimen data can be shared. The deals undermine reciprocity and fairness by providing:
- No guarantee that African states will receive access to the medical tools developed from pathogen and viral information shared with the U.S., which is the core deal under negotiation at WHO following the deadly inequity of COVID;
- No guarantee for most countries (only two of seven) that the U.S. will recognize countries that have shared viral information in subsequent publications; and
- No accountability or conditions for drugmakers benefiting from the shared samples.
Public Citizen reviewed six bilateral specimen sharing agreements published by the State Department and an additional agreement accessed independently. While State Department global health official Jeff Graham said this week that a limited number of countries had signed such agreements, in fact, at least 11 countries have signed them.
Public Citizen has sued under the Freedom of Information Act for access to several of these texts and has made them available here. The analysis was developed in collaboration with Emily Bass, author of the “To End A Plague: Again” Substack.