May 20 (UPI) -- The World Health Organization announced Tuesday it has officially adopted the first-ever "Pandemic Agreement" to prevent future pandemics.
The member states voted 124-0 in favor of the agreement, which it said "sets out principles, approaches and tools" to increase international coordination "in order to strengthen the global health architecture for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response."
"The world is safer today thanks to the leadership, collaboration and commitment of our member states to adopt the historic WHO Pandemic Agreement," WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. "The agreement is a victory for public health, science and multilateral action. It will ensure we, collectively, can better protect the world from future pandemic threats. It is also a recognition by the international community that our citizens, societies and economies must not be left vulnerable to again suffer losses like those endured during COVID-19."
The 33-page Agreement is based on an objective that states its purpose is to "prevent, prepare for and respond to pandemics," and calls on WHO members to "progressively strengthen measures and capacities for pandemic prevention and coordinated multisectoral surveillance."
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The heightened response asks member nations to monitor for infectious disease on the rise, to take necessary measures to prevent the spread of diseases and pathogens and to provide immunizations as necessary, among other methods of public health protection and maintenance.
The goals are meant to be achieved without interference in a sovereign nation's laws.
News of the agreement came as U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered video remarks reiterating the United States' plans to withdraw from the WHO.
"Like many legacy institutions, the WHO has become mired in bureaucratic bloat, entrenched paradigms, conflicts of interest, and international power politics," Kennedy Jr. said. "While the United States has provided the lion's share of the organization's funding historically, other countries such as China have exerted undue influence over its operations in ways that serve their own interests and not particularly the interests of the global public."
Kennedy added that while global cooperation were still important to him and U.S. president Donald Trump "it isn't working very well under the WHO as the failures of the COVID era demonstrate."
"I urge the world's health ministers and the WHO to take our withdrawal from the organization as a wake-up call," he said.
