Hi,
Raising relevant questions is a key part of good journalism, even when we may not find answers.
We want to know how countries and stakeholders assess the price of biological information. This is an urgent question given the pace at which transactional bilateral deals are being finalized offering aid in lieu of info.
These deals are in competition with, an ostensibly slower multilateral process that needs to estimate what it will cost to get a new global rules-based system up and running. One that is built on a fair assessment of the value of biological information and the spin-off benefits of having a predictable mechanism.
In this edition, my colleague Vineeth tried to find those links to the missing number: what are countries selling for, and what is the value of the PABS system. No straight forward answers.
We hope you find this useful ahead of the resumed PABS negotiations beginning tomorrow in Geneva. As usual, we will be onsite.
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More soon!
Best,
Priti
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I. GHF ANALYSIS
The Missing Number: The Price of Legal Certainty, and the Cost of Compliance For the Pathogen Access & Benefit Sharing System
By Vineeth Penmetsa
Penmetsa is an India-based legal researcher with a strong interest in health law and global health policy. He can be reached at vineeth.penmetsa@gmail.com
Priti Patnaik contributed to this story
Estimating the value of pathogen information is an exercise that WHO member states must address swiftly in the on-going negotiations over a new Pathogen Access Benefit Sharing system for global health.
In addition, sooner than later, they must also put a number on the price of legal certainty that such a mechanism promises for manufacturers. Put simply, what is the contribution that the pharmaceutical industry and other users of such information, could commit to, in exchange for a rules-based system that will govern the access to information, the sharing of benefits arising from the use of such information.
These considerations assume urgency in light of the blitzkrieg of bilateral deals set in motion by the United States that equates the access to biological information with aid – a transaction too simplistic for the multifaceted system that the PABS mechanism is designed to be.
While WHO member states were negotiating the PABS system in Geneva in late 2025, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in Washington D.C. signing a bilateral health agreement with Kenya. Rwanda followed the next day. Rubio announced “30 to 40” similar agreements in the pipeline; a State Department official said 50.
