WHO, WIPO, and WTO Unite to Foster Healthcare Access for Future Pandemics

Written by: Arjita Gupta

Edited by: Anjali Kalan

Last Updated: December 21, 2022

On 16 December at the Joint Technical Symposium, the WHO (World Health Organization), WTO (World Trade Organization), and WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) gathered to join calls to foster innovation, equitable, timely, and cooperative access to medical facilities and healthcare products to address future pandemics.

Daren Tang (the director-general of WIPO), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (the director-general of WTO), and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (the director-general of WHO) opened the meeting and talked about how health situations are important, and the critical ones as the pandemic can drastically change speedily. They gave examples of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it affected the world.

The leaders stressed that it was crucial to prepare and learn from the current pandemic, and how it progressed past the first three years. Tang hoped that the symposium will help them to bring together their collective will and strengthen it to work alongside the partners and across agencies in civil society, industry, and member states.

The panel discussions also included recovery and response to the COVID-19 crisis, how to build resilience, and central challenges across the world for future pandemics. The speakers for the discussion hailed from Gilead Sciences, South Africa, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the International Generic and Biosimilar Medicines Association, and Médecins Sans Frontières.

The motto is to build a more sustainable and healthier outcome for future health crises in the world. Okonjo-Iweala said that the trilateral symposium was a way to facilitate intellectual property and global trade rules and its contributions through inclusive, frank, and empirical dialogues.

Delivering the keynote address, the professor of global health at Columbia University, and director of the Centre for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa, Salim Abdool Karim looked at the pandemic and its developments from a scientific viewpoint. He talked about steps to take to respond and prepare for the pandemic.

He noted that unpredictable new variants of the COVID-19 virus have been increasing and spreading despite immunity around the globe because of natural infection and vaccination. However, this has helped reduce severe illness and hospitalization.

The grounded dialogues were rounded on what worked and what did not to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and its global response. And Okonjo-Iweala said this will also assist in garnering better strategies and responses in laying the foundation for oncoming global medical issues and crises.