The World Health Organization’s global pandemic agreement remains stalled in political limbo, trapped by unresolved debates over pathogen data sharing and equitable access to medical countermeasures. Adopted in May 2025 to fortify planetary defenses against future health crises, the treaty’s most contentious details were delayed to secure voting consensus—sparking an ongoing impasse between wealthy nations and lower-income countries that persisted through the eighth round of negotiations in Geneva last week.
The Stalemated Negotiations and the PABS System
Countries met in Geneva for the eighth round of negotiations, but diplomats produced little tangible progress on the framework’s core mechanisms. Suerie Moon, co-director of the global health center at the Geneva Graduate Institute, described the agreement as existing in a state of continued limbo, noting that while nations acknowledge the necessity of progress, the path forward remains obscure.
At the heart of the disagreement is the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing annex, known as PABS. While participating nations agree in principle on the need for rapid pathogen sharing and equitable responses to future pandemics, they remain sharply divided on how the PABS system should function in practice.
Addressing the UN General Assembly, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged member states to bridge their differences. Warning that procedural delays impose heavy tolls when the next pandemic arrives, Tedros called on leaders to finalize the agreement as soon as possible.
Global North Versus Global South: Data Access and Influence
Negotiations largely reflect a divide between wealthy nations in the global north and lower-income nations in the global south. According to Suerie Moon, wealthy countries prioritize establishing systems that ensure the rapid, unimpeded development of new products.
During COVID-19, early action demonstrated the power of open databases. In early January 2020, Chinese scientists uploaded the SARS-CoV-2 genome to a publicly available database, a move that David Reddy, director general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, credits as a foundational element enabling rapid vaccine development.
In contrast, lower-income countries retain bitter memories of the pandemic. Sangeeta Shashikant, a legal adviser for the nonprofit Third World Network, pointed out that wealthy nations procured multiple rounds of vaccine doses for their own populations while lower-income countries got scraps. Consequently, nations in the global south demand ironclad guarantees that sharing pathogen samples today will translate to guaranteed access to diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines tomorrow.
Proposed Mechanisms and Scientific Friction
To gain an advantage, lower-income nations have proposed various restrictions on database access. Some delegations argue for housing pathogen genetic data in closed repositories accessible only to entities that register and sign contracts with the WHO. These agreements could obligate developers to provide a share of resulting products to the WHO at reduced costs for distribution to lower-income countries.
This model mirrors the WHO’s pandemic influenza preparedness network, wherein countries submit virus samples in exchange for more equitable vaccine access, with wealthy nations already committing 20% of emergency pandemic vaccine production to the organization.
However, wealthy nations and scientific institutions strongly oppose tying database access to restrictive conditions, arguing that such hurdles would impede vital scientific agility. Amber Sholz, head of science policy at the Leibniz Institute, cautioned that erecting administrative barriers around genetic data creates significant friction that hampers researchers’ ability to understand pathogen biology and human cellular interactions during a crisis.
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