WORLD HEALTH ASSEMBLY

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Context - The World Health Assembly started a global negotiation process to finalize the pandemic treaty.

Details

The World Health Assembly started the negotiation process to finalize the Pandemic treaty, its objective is to prevent further pandemics and improve the preparedness and response in case of their occurrence.

Pandemic Treaty

The pandemic treaty is expected to cover aspects like data sharing and genome sequencing of emerging viruses and fair distribution of vaccines and drugs.
The European Union (EU) also wants a ban on wildlife markets to be included in the treaty.
- A widely-accepted theory points out that the novel coronavirus may have jumped from animals to humans in a wildlife market in China.
- EU wants the treaty to be legally binding, but concerns were raised by the U.S., Brazil and India. Therefore legal nature of the treaty is yet to be defined.
Article 19 of the WHO Constitution allows the World Health Assembly to adopt conventions or agreements on matters related to health.
- The proposal needed to be accepted by a two-thirds majority.

World Health Assembly

The World Health Assembly (WHA) is the platform through which the World Health Organization (WHO) is managed by its 194 member states.
It is the world's most elevated health policy setting body and is composed of health ministers from member states.
The members of the WHA generally meet every year in May in Geneva, Switzerland at WHO Headquarters.
The main tasks of the WHA are to decide significant policy questions, as well as to approve the WHO work programme and budget.