AHF South Africa urges leaders to take a stand and advocate for equal rights and resources in the WHO Pandemic Agreement

As part of the Aids Healthcare Foundation’s (AHF) ongoing Save Our Society (SOS) advocacy campaign, the organisation urges the Global South and African leaders to seize the opportunity to shape Africa's future in global health security by demanding an equitable Pandemic Agreement that is favourable for all nations.

The Covid-19 pandemic exposed deep inequalities, with 85% of African countries unable to vaccinate their populations while wealthier nations hoarded vaccines. The current Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) sitting is underway from November 4 to 15 and presents a renewed chance for Africa and the Global South to ensure these disparities are addressed and the outcome is a fair, transparent and equitable agreement.

"For a Pandemic Agreement to truly serve Africa's needs, leaders across the continent must demand equity at its core. This includes ensuring fair and timely access to vaccines, diagnostics and treatments through the establishment of regional manufacturing hubs and binding commitments on technology transfer across Africa," said Dr Dube, Director Quality Management and Clinical Operations at the AHF South Africa.

"The pandemic has shown us that the health of one nation affects the health of all. Africans cannot wait for handouts in times of crisis, as was the case with Covid-19 and what is currently happening with insufficient access to vaccines in response to the Mpox outbreak. We must demand the tools, knowledge and capacity to protect ourselves and ensure no country is left behind. African nations must be able to secure the knowledge and resources necessary to produce vaccines and other critical health commodities independently - reducing reliance on external suppliers and empowering the continent to respond to future pandemics with greater resilience."

An X (formally Twitter) space discussion hosted by AHF Africa on Thursday, October 31, addressed the status of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB12) WHO Pandemic Agreement negotiations that are meant to address and shape the equitable future for global health. Moderated by Diana Tibesigwa, AHF Regional Advocacy and Policy Manager (East and West Africa), a panel of experts and stakeholders addressed concerns of production capacity, transparency, equitable provisions, knowledge transfer, sustainable financing, pathogen access, product sharing and inclusivity. Since 2021, negotiations for this agreement have been ongoing with the conclusion for the mandate set to 2025.

Aggrey Aluso, Director of Africa Region for the Pandemic Action Network (PAN) and the Executive Director of Resilience Action Network Africa (RANA), said it is important to build on the lessons from the Covid pandemic and support processes that ensure we are better prepared to manage.

“We are at a high risk of experiencing pandemics and building resilience capacity across different connected issues. With different sectors, our lives are connected and disrupted like we have seen with Covid. We are trying to build this connected agenda of supporting the emergence of resilience capacity.

"The Pandemic Agreement is one of the promising opportunities to institutionalise the knowledge and lessons from Covid - and building on what we learnt is critical to supporting our global health agenda, which is equity. Our work and motivation have been to drive this agenda in its entirety, ensuring that the outcome is something that shifts the needle significantly. This is to ensure that we are at a place where different parts of the world can detect and contain pandemic threats quickly and efficiently – with no tragic loss of life as we saw with previous pandemics.

“It has been a challenging process, but we continue in partnership with AHF and other organisations to keep the agenda high in the discussions. We have substantively made provisions that can promise change or transformation in terms of how we manage our health security.

“It is far from being achieved despite many negotiations, 12 discussion sessions and several informal sessions later and we are now going into the INB12. The areas that look promising and have significant opportunities to bring the equity agenda to the top remain the most contested and unresolved, and therefore the work that needs to be done is still very high up.”

John Mdluli, Head of Community Engagement at The Aurum Institute Clinical Trials Division, said he finds a transparent and equitable pandemic agreement as an opportunity to move an advocacy agenda forward. This agreement can help other sub-agreements.

"In South Africa, we were privileged when we were recommended and chosen to be the first country to look at the MRNA. We have seen many benefits in terms of tech transfer that added to other parts of Africa. We can't look at this agreement in isolation; we have commitments from organisations to produce vaccines. We must look at it as a big umbrella with several other commitments and find a way to align all these. We still have a long way to go, even though we have seen a lot of progress.”

Africa's leaders have an essential opportunity to influence the final terms of the WHO Pandemic Agreement. By standing firm on these issues – equity, regional production, technology transfer and sustainable financing – African nations can secure a fairer and more resilient future for the continent. The time to act is now.