Amid the horror of the Ebola epidemic, world leaders gathered at the G7 summit in France were urged to find the “political will” to push through the final part of the Pandemic Agreement on Monday.

In a joint letter, Brazil’s President Luiz Lula da Silva and World Health Organization (WHO) chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged leaders gathered on the shores of Lake Geneva to get the “benefits sharing” annex of the deal signed with a “sense of urgency”.

The Pandemic Agreement, which seeks to ensure the world is better prepared for the next global outbreak, was agreed last year but a vital element of it was deferred because of arguments over its wording.

The Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing annex (PAPS) aims to enable countries to quickly identify pathogens and share their genetic information so that scientists can rapidly develop tests, treatments and vaccines, secure in the knowledge they will have access to them.

A similar system already exists for influenza viruses, but there is nothing in place for the thousands of other pathogens that could cause the next pandemic, including Ebola.

Big pharma fears that by signing up to PABS it will be obliged to more formally recognise countries’ “genetic resources” – something that could impinge on their intellectual property rights and limit profits.

Countries fear that if they simply give away those resources, they will not receive the tests, vaccines and treatments made from them – something that happened during Covid-19 when developing countries were amongst the last to receive jabs.

“The PABS system rests on a simple, fair bargain: those who share dangerous pathogens quickly must be able to trust that the vaccines and treatments born from that sharing will reach their own people too”, says the letter to G7 leaders.

“Every one of us has a stake on both sides of it … This is not charity, and it is not only conscience…. A virus left to burn anywhere will, in time, find everyone,” it adds.

Citing research published in 2023, the letter says there is “close to a one in four chance of another pandemic within the coming decade”.

“Climate change, changing land use and evolving agriculture are redrawing the map of where dangerous pathogens emerge; the comfortable belief that outbreaks begin only in distant places is no longer true, and future hotspots may arise in or near your own countries,” it warns. 

“At the same time, advances in biotechnology, matched unevenly by biosafety, raise the risk of accidental or deliberate release”.

It is unclear, and perhaps unlikely, that a truly global agreement on benefits sharing can be reached. 

The US, like Argentina, has pulled out of the WHO and is not a party to the Pandemic Agreement. At the same time, the US is home to many of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies.

Nevertheless, an agreement between the remaining 192 member states of the WHO is possible and would represent a major step forward.

“Every month this annex stays unfinished is a month the world is less ready than it could be, and people are less safe than they deserve to be,” say Mr Lula da Silva and Dr Tedros.

“Finalising this Agreement, through a shared commitment to one another, is our collective promise to protect humanity”.

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