![Needed: Greater Accountability on Pathogen Data Sharing, To Minimize Biosecurity Risks & To Boost Preparedness [Guest Essay]](/content/images/size/w1280/format/webp/2026/03/pexels-steve-1330280.jpg)
Newsletter Edition #153 [Treaty Talks]
Readers,
We are sharing a guest essay today, ahead of the negotiations on the Pathogen Access Benefit Sharing system at the WHO, that begin tomorrow.
Legal expert Nithin Ramakrishnan from Third World Network, who has authored this essay, examines currently proposed ways to share data and pathogens as per existing practices. He cautions against the potential risks resulting from non-transparent procedures that may fail to achieve equity in the access to medial products during health emergencies.
We bring this exceptionally on a Sunday, given the importance of these negotiations, and their implications for long term Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response.
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Priti Patnaik, Founder & Publisher, Geneva Health Files
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Guest Essay:
Needed: Greater Accountability on Pathogen Data Sharing, To Minimize Biosecurity Risks & To Boost Preparedness
By Nithin Ramakrishnan
Senior Researcher, Third World Network
Negotiations are now at the final stages in developing the WHO’s new pathogen access and benefit sharing (PABS) system, as an Annex to the Pandemic Agreement (PA), adopted last May 2025.
The PABS System aims to facilitate the rapid sharing of pathogens with pandemic potential and their genetic sequence information, while ensuring fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their use, on an equal footing, especially access to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics (VTDs).
The PABS negotiations offer an opportunity for countries to build a system that improves upon not only preparedness, but also mechanisms to address fast-evolving biosecurity risks - at the heart of this is accountability.
It appears though that the negotiating text prepared by the Bureau of Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG), supported by the WHO secretariat, may not effectively address global health security risks, at least on two counts. First, the proposed model is not providing any legal guarantee that VTDs manufactured will be made available to people as benefit sharing, compromising global public health preparedness. Second, the proposed PABS model could result in unaccountable, and non-transparent ways of sharing data, and pathogens that cause dangerous diseases. This goes against fundamentals and objectives of Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Nagoya Protocol (NP), compromising not only benefit sharing but also biosecurity.