Seven million victims were an argument of sufficient weight for Covid to put on the table the need to establish a global agreement for action against pandemics.
“To safeguard our collective future, it is essential that an agreement be reached on pandemics,” all countries on the planet announced almost unanimously in 2021. 194 of the 196 countries in the world in the midst of a health and economic crisis joined that declaration. And they added “Only a strong global pact against pandemics can protect future generations from a repeat of the Covid-19 crisis, which caused millions of deaths and caused widespread social and economic devastation, mainly due to insufficient international collaboration.
Now, three years later and just two months before the deadline agreed at that time for making a first joint decision, which should be adopted in May of this year, the agreement remains only a sum of good will. Once again the interests in defense of national sovereignty prevail over a benefit that should transcend borders. Although António Guterres declared at the time “We are in this together, and we will overcome them together,” his phrase does not seem to have transcended. Beyond a host of declarations of good intentions, “we did not come out better” from the covid pandemic.
While it is true that international collaboration and cooperation between the public-private health industry resulted in a widespread vaccination system – in first world countries – it is also true that private businesses flourished that took advantage of the situation to accumulate economic benefits without modesty and that once again the double gap that divides the world, economic and ideological, was evident. Peru led the world in mortality rates during the pandemic; The United States recorded one million deaths from covid as a result of the inaction of the “Trumpist” government; India half a million and Africa, with a very low vaccination percentage, added 250,000 deaths.
Faced with this data, defenders of establishing a collaboration agreement in the face of possible new global health challenges, which seem more plausible threats as the effects of climate change advance, argue that an agreement on pandemics would provide enormous and universally shared benefits. . These include increased capacity to detect novel pathogens that may endanger global health and an equitable supply of the tests, treatments and vaccines needed to combat potential threats. “In addition to protecting countless lives and livelihoods, the early achievement of a global agreement on pandemics would send a powerful message: even in our fractured and fragmented world, international cooperation can bring global solutions to global problems.”
