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Health Ministry, local experts must collaborate on pandemic treaty

Like any global regulatory initiatives, the main challenge of the proposed pandemic treaty is that apart from being ambitious, its broad scope may make it challenging for the proposal to be universally accepted.

The priorities of countries are diverse and in any diplomatic negotiations, unless and until several deals are made during the negotiations, such a treaty may not be forthcoming despite its correct and true narratives. National priorities normally precede the global needs unless the carefully-crafted treaty incorporates the priorities and demands of the states, which outcome may be impracticable.

The other challenge is the government commitment to agree on the treaty would implicate submitting the part of its jealously-guarded Westphalian construct sovereignty to the World Health Organisation (WHO) when it comes to disease control. This would mean states will have to renunciate their sovereign power in matters pertaining to authority to share information, recommend public health measures and enhance national capacity.

Achieving the ambitious goal in making the treaty a reality will be subjected to a few conditions.

Firstly, like any treaty, it needs countries to ratify it and like in any multilateral agreements, this will take years until it is fully accepted. The process will require negotiations and compromises until it is fully accepted.

Secondly, most developing and least developed countries do not have experts to advise governments in highly technical areas. Hence, governments must allow researchers and non-governmental organisations to be actively involved to play their role by providing expertise and specialisation. Inclusivity of other than government bodies in matters concerning treaty negotiations are either unknown or least expected in those countries.

Thirdly, the challenge of limiting the scope of the agreement to key issues focusing on the shortcomings of international health regulations (IHR) as, for example, implementing an
effective system for exchanging and verifying information on threats, as well as appropriate response mechanisms, monitoring of the implementation of the treaty's provisions, and enforcing responsibility for their violation.

Fourthly, resolving the issue of seeking accountability, as well as the problem of verifying compliance with new regulations, will also need to be addressed in the treaty.

Fifthly, addressing possible conflicts between the provisions of the new treaty and the present IHR 2005, which could adversely affect the application of the standards contained in both. In this regard, the March 30 proposal that the IHR 2005 would strengthen the treaty is not sufficiently clear.

Reform of the present international health security system for preventing and responding to public health threats of international concern is necessary, and the proposals contained in the March 30 open letter must be seen to be a proactive attempt to re-evaluate the effectiveness of the current regulatory system and demand immediate response in time of pandemic.

Of immediate concerns are in areas of improvements on alert systems, data sharing and transparency of state's legal commitment to response to health threats of international jurisdiction. These are some real examples that require immediate scrutiny for better global health regulatory regime.

The area where IHR 2005 should be supported is the need to enhance technical and financial support to developing and least developed countries to assist them in meeting surveillance and response capacity requirements of IHR 2005.

As immediate changes in the proposed new Pandemic Treaty can be challenging, working on improving IHR 2005 would be most practical and can be seen acceptable by member states.

In view of its intricacies that go beyond public health, an independent body comprising experts, non-governmental bodies, governments and international organisations should be established for the purposes of reviewing the current structure and governance of world health security without dispensing the crucial role played by the WHO.

As a member of the WHO and state party to IHR 2005, Malaysia, through its comprehensive Strategy for Emerging Diseases and Public Health Emergencies Workplan II (2017-2021) (MySED) II, must continue to play a proactive role in responding to the proposed pandemic treaty.

As the meeting of the World Health Assembly will be convened in November, an immediate action is needed to gather experts from the health and medical sector, NGOs, economists, legal experts and academicians with the objective of collecting their views on how the proposed treaty should be shaped.

This will be valuable input for our delegates to position Malaysia in their World Health Assembly forthcoming meeting. The deliberation by our local experts should be coordinated by the Health Ministry before the special session.


The writer is deputy vice-chancellor and professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Universiti Teknologi Mara. He is also a member, Eminent Person Group, Asian African Legal Consultative Organisation

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