The 79th World Health Assembly (WHA79) deferred adoption of the Pandemic Agreement's Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) annex to WHA80 in May 2027, or to an earlier special session if a text is ready1. The next negotiating round, the seventh Intergovernmental Working Group session (IGWG7), is set for 6 to 17 July 20262. PABS is the part of the treaty meant to guarantee that countries which share virus samples receive fair access to the vaccines made from them. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said real progress had been made, and member states cited a need for more time3.
This is the second slip in a month: negotiators had already agreed to extend the PABS talks at the resumed sixth IGWG session on 1 May. The annex has stalled because high-income states resist binding sharing obligations they fear will constrain their own manufacturers, the same fault line that has dogged every benefit-sharing negotiation since the 2007 dispute over Indonesian H5N1 samples.
The timing gives the deferral its edge. The treaty's vaccine-sharing core stays inoperative at the exact moment a novel-species emergency with no licensed countermeasure would have tested it. If a Bundibugyo vaccine reaches trials this year, there is still no binding legal route to push doses to the low-income countries carrying the outbreak; allocation stays at the discretion of manufacturers and the buyers WHO can pay first. The world adopted the treaty in 2024 and, two years on, still cannot do the one thing its equity advocates designed it to do.
