PSI Statement to WHO INB 12th Session
On this resumed 12th meeting of the INB, Public Services International, a global union federation, representing more than 15 million health and workers around the world, shares its concerns regarding the lack of commitment to ensure access to health technologies. We must remember that workers in developing countries had to treat people with COVID-19 with gloves, vests and even masks. We must remember that, while rich countries had already most of their population vaccinated, countries in the global south were not able to vaccinate their health workers. So, we cannot wait an emergency to start sharing benefits.
We are concerned because, so far, we have not seen any commitment or guarantee to access during pre-PHEIC stage. At the same time, there is a lot of pressure placed on developing countries to accept positions of developed countries and to make robust investments to share pathogens and GSD, during pre-emergency times. The same happens with the proposal for pandemic surveillance. But then those countries will need to wait for the pharmaceutical companies to share only in stage of emergency.
We support the proposal by the bureau to remove references of voluntary sharing of pandemic-related vaccines and other technologies in the context of clinical trials and we believe this understanding should be expanded across Art. 12 and we encourage that this spirit is extended to the whole text.
We are of the strong view that Article 12 must incorporate essential elements for an effective, accountable and transparent Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) system.
What is PABS?
The Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) seeks to create a mechanism in which countries will share their pathogens and genetic sequence data and other countries, companies, universities, laboratories, etc, will have access to that data to develop health products. The idea is that the information shared becomes technologies (benefits) to face future emergencies. The political issue behind it: most of the world's pathogens and GSD is located in the global south, while the technological capacity is the global north. Developed countries are pressuring developing countries to have obligations to share, but are not accepting any obligations in relation to access to benefits.
Such a system must be administered by the WHO under the oversight of WHO Member States. The PABS System must have traceability mechanisms that identify the recipients of pathogen materials and sequence information. The system must also require all users accessing materials and sequences to accept legally binding terms and conditions: all recipients must sign the standard contract and not by “some recipients”, as it was apparently mentioned yesterday.