The agreement aims to ensure affordable access to pandemic-related health products and reshape government responses to global health emergencies.

Speaking at the G20 Health Working Group meeting in Johannesburg,Gauteng province Motsoaledi emphasised the need for equitable benefit sharing, especially for countries that provide critical pathogen samples.

"What is outstanding before implementation is what we call Pandemic Access and Benefit Sharing. What it means is that in the past, most of these infections occurred in poorer settings, especially on the African continent. The richer countries come here, they pick up the pathogen because they’re scientifically advanced, they study it, analyse it, and make medicine or a vaccine and the country where they got the pathogen gets nothing, or is at the back of the queue. So that Pandemic Access and Benefit Sharing, which has an annexure that still needs to be finalised, is actually explaining what should happen. If you take a pathogen from our country, what is due to me? In fact, it’s written in a text which is going to be finalised," said Motsoaledi.

--ChannelAfrica--