Member states start text-based negotiations next week on the final outstanding piece of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Pandemic Agreement, the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) system.

They will have had nine days to consider the seven-page first draft of the PABS system, which was distributed late Friday (24 October) by the administration Bureau of the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG), which is running the talks. 

READ: PABS System (Draft 1: 24 October 2025)

The draft considers access to pathogen materials and sequence information to be on a “equal footing” with “equitable benefit-sharing” arising from this sharing – something that has already been agreed to by member states in the Pandemic Agreement’s Article 12.

The PABS system being negotiated will be an annex to Article 12, but at this stage, it is a mere skeleton and negotiators have much work ahead to add more substance.

According to Article 12,  the IGWG needs to develop provisions to govern the PABS System, “including definitions of pathogens with pandemic potential and PABS materials and sequence information, modalities, legal nature, terms and conditions, and operational dimensions”.

The draft defines the pathogens in question as those with “pandemic potential”, and the “materials and sequence information” of pathogens’ to be shared refers to the “biological material”, including DNA, RNA, and proteins.

Manufacturers’ obligations

Manufacturers of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics that want access to pathogen information will need to sign a contract with the WHO “setting out their commitments for rapid, timely, fair and equitable benefit-sharing” in exchange.

In a pandemic, the “participating manufacturers” will make available to WHO “rapid access to their real time production of safe, quality, and effective vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics for the pathogen causing the pandemic emergency”.

Manufacturers that are party to the PABS system will also made annual payment to the WHO based on their “nature and capacity.” 

The draft also opens the door to non-manufacturers to enter into “legally binding commitments for rapid, timely, fair and equitable benefit sharing, based on their nature, capacity and use of PABS Materials and Sequence Information”. It’s is not clear who these could be.

Benefit-sharing obligations

The draft spells out eight ways in which benefits accrued from access to the pathogen information can be shared. 

These include providing access to pandemic-related health products; granting non-exclusive licenses to manufacturers in developing countries to make these health products; technical assistance and money.

Benefit-sharing may be legally binding, something that developing countries are fervently in favour of.

Pathogen information will be shared through laboratories “authorised under relevant national or domestic procedures” and those in a “WHO coordinated laboratory network”. These will need to implement “biosecurity and biosafety standards” that are applicable within the WHO laboratory networks.

Sequence information will be shared via a “WHO-recognised sequence database or databases”, which will agree not to claim intellectual property rights over the materials and sequence information.

All PABS material and sequence Information will be assigned a “unique persistent identifier”. The IGWG Bureau wants further discussion about unique persistent identifiers.

Both China and Russia have made proposals to restrict access to pathogen information in the interests of biosecurity, with China suggesting that only manufacturers based in countries that are party to the pandemic agreement should be allowed to get access to the PABS system. However, the draft proposes fairly wide access to information based within the usual biosecurity constraints.

Aside from the PABS system annex, the IGWG will also prepare the ground for the Conference of the Parties that will govern the pandemic agreement, and the terms of reference for a coordinating financial mechanism, which will help defend countries against outbreaks and pandemics.