Critics Warn US Bilateral Health Deals With African Nations Threaten Pandemic Equity Efforts

US Department of State text messages detailing health agreements between the Trump administration and African nations have sparked fresh alarm among public health advocates, who warn that the coercive deals could allow the United States to secure access to virus samples and valuable data while failing to guarantee that countries providing them will receive vaccines, treatments, and other benefits in return.

Public Citizen said Thursday that it had analyzed documents concerning the Trump administration's terms for sharing pathogen data in health agreements with African nations. The consumer advocacy group described these terms as "unfair" and said that they threaten "to undermine the core equity bargain of the [World Health Organization's] Pandemic Agreement negotiations."

The conditions of the proposed deals, said Public Citizen, "would require African states to share viral samples and pathogen information with the US and allow the US to share that information with drugmakers, but provide no credible expectation of benefits in return or access to medical tools developed from those samples."

"This undercuts the federated proposal for viral sharing with access benefits put forward this month at WHO negotiations by the Africa+ Group, which includes all countries for which bilateral specimen agreements are available," Public Citizen added.

At the center of the controversy are agreements that tie US health assistance—which has been eviscerated by the Trump administration with widespread deadly consequences—to commitments involving disease surveillance, data sharing, and, in some cases, the exchange of pathogen samples.

Supporters argue the deals strengthen America's ability to detect and respond to emerging infectious diseases while providing partner countries with much-needed funding after devastating cuts to US aid. Public health advocates, however, contend the agreements shift power away from multilateral institutions and toward one-on-one negotiations in which lower-income countries have less leverage against the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation.

As Common Dreams reported last month, President Donald Trump's so-called “America First” approach to global health strategy is characterized by transactional agreements with African governments to restore some funding. Human rights advocates have raised concerns about the possibly coercive nature of this strategy.

“Trump is exploiting African states’ urgent need to restore lifesaving health aid and pushing them to give up a shot at real lifesaving medical access and equity, for which so many people have worked, bled, and died,” Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines program, said Thursday in a statement. "African states at WHO have led the way in efforts to secure a fair deal and cooperation to fight pandemics, but individually, these states are vulnerable to Trump’s threats.”