GENEVA (AN) — After more than three years of intensive negotiations, the U.N. health agency's member nations clinched a deal on a draft pandemic treaty that will go to the World Health Assembly for approval in May.
The negotiations, stretching over 13 formal rounds of meetings since the assembly authorized them in Dec. 2021, finally concluded on early Wednesday morning. The final hurdle involved resolving a difficult question about whether drug makers should be required to give others the technology needed to make pandemic-related vaccines, treatments, and other products. The answer: All such transfers must be "mutually agreed."
