‘The next pandemic will not wait’: Lula and WHO director in urgent plea for leaders to finalise agreement

As Ebola spreads in the DRC, the Brazilian president and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus ask leaders to agree pandemic treaty created after Covid World leaders have been urged to keep a promise to the millions of people who died during Covid by finalising an agreement on how to deal with future pandemics. As a G7 summit begins in France, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, and Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, have issued a joint letter saying a treaty needs urgent political backing at the highest level because “the next pandemic will not wait for us”. The letter comes amid a rapidly expanding Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that already has 782 confirmed cases and 181 deaths. Negotiators will meet next month for a new round of talks on the “pathogen access and benefit sharing” annexe to the WHO pandemic agreement. The annexe must be in place before the agreement can come into effect, but countries missed a May deadline, unable to agree on how to share information on pathogens that could cause pandemics, and what access to vaccines, tests and treatments nations should be guaranteed in return. De