The World Health Organization opened its annual meeting on Monday with government ministers and other top envoys hoping to reinforce global preparedness for the next pandemic in the devastating wake of COVID-19.

But the most ambitious project, to adopt a pandemic “treaty,” has been shelved for now after 2 1/2 years of work failed to produce a draft that countries could unite behind by Friday, as originally hoped.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insists it’s not a failure, and acknowledged an “immense” task faced by negotiators on a “very ambitious timeline” — alluding to the many years it usually takes for U.N. countries to reach global treaties.

When diplomats, health officials and activists were still attempting to produce a draft pandemic treaty, he had predicted the assembly could be one of the most significant in WHO’s 76-year history. Not anymore.

“Of course, we all wish that we had been able to reach a consensus on the agreement in time for this health assembly and cross the finish line,” Tedros said in his opening remarks. “But I remain confident that you still will — because where there is a will, there is a way.”

“It’s now for this World Health Assembly to decide what that way is — meaning the solution is in your hands,” he added.

WHO officials and others have been eager to build on the momentum of concern from the coronavirus pandemic, with the risk that the more it fades into history, the less the public — and policymakers — will be interested in preparing for a future pandemic.

The basic premise is that pathogens that have no regard for national borders require a united response from all countries. But decision-makers have struggled to balance national interest with the call from WHO officials to think more broadly in the interest of humanity and equity.

So health ministers will now have to take up the work and try to overcome deep-set differences, including how the world can share information on emerging pathogens and scarce resources like vaccines and masks when demand skyrockets.

Other high-profile participants, including International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, also addressed the gathering of the U.N. health agency’s 194 member states.

Guterres, speaking by video, called the pandemic accord a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to make sure the global health systems respond faster and more equitably in the next outbreak and urged delegates to back amendments to the international health as a way to boost the response to emergencies,

“Amidst the legal arguments and endless negotiation for the pandemic treaty, let us remember that the heart of the health care is not just policies and programs, it is about our shared humanity,” Thailand’s Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said via a video feed.

Envoys will discuss global health concerns including the fallout from wars in places like the Middle East, Sudan and Ukraine.

Instead of a pandemic treaty, the best shot now for bulking up the international health architecture to fight such cross-border outbreaks is through amendments to the nearly two-decades-old International Health Regulations, which countries have “in principle” agreed to, Tedros said last week.

Those regulations focus on helping countries detect and respond to health emergencies.

For example, envoys to the assembly could establish the concept of a “pandemic emergency” to build on and refine the cumbersome category of Public Health Emergency of International Concern, which is currently WHO’s highest level of alert for dangerous epidemics.

Such a term could help inform the public at a time when, as with COVID-19, confusion and uncertainty are widespread.

(AP)