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Policy experts warn deadlock compromise could weaken benefit-sharing and fragment pathogen data systems
Global health advocates have criticised a proposal to introduce a “hybrid” or two-track system for pathogen data-sharing under the World Health Organization’s Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (Pabs) negotiations, warning it could enable researchers and companies to bypass equity provisions.
The hybrid solution would allow some pathogen sequence databases to require users to register and commit to benefit-sharing obligations, while others could allow anonymous user access. Critics say this risks fragmenting data systems and weakens accountability.
“A two-track system would fragment the system,” said KM Gopakumar, an India-based legal adviser and senior researcher for the Third World Network, an NGO that advocates around trade and development, during a webinar arranged by the Aids Healthcare Foundation on 10 April. “If different datasets are subject to different access conditions, it becomes harder to ensure meaningful benefit-sharing.”
Lauren Paremoer, a health policy and political economy researcher at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, warned that the proposal could exacerbate existing inequalities in global research partnerships. Southern institutions could be pressured into using systems with weaker requirements, limiting their ability to secure fair benefit-sharing, she told the webinar. “Centuries of piracy is part of the context in which this two-track system is problematic.”
Sticking point
The hybrid model emerged as a possible compromise during negotiations last month in Geneva, as countries remain deadlocked over how to operationalise rules governing access to pathogen samples and data during outbreaks.
Data user registration has been a central sticking point in the Pabs negotiations, which aim to avoid a repeat of inequities seen during the Covid-19 pandemic, when developing countries that shared pathogen data often struggled to access resulting vaccines and treatments. Many countries in the global south argue that registration is essential to ensuring benefits flow back to data providers, while others, mostly in the global north, say mandatory registration will stifle innovation.
WHO wants the negotiations to conclude so the annex can be adopted in May during the next Global Health Assembly, completing the global Pandemic Agreement adopted by member states last year. The Pabs negotiations will resume in Geneva on 27 April.