When Boris Johnson, along with other select world leaders, unveiled plans for an international pandemic treaty led by the World Health Organisation, we might for a nanosecond have believed this was a move for greater global understanding and good.

Scratch the surface and strip away the empty rhetoric, however, and it’s clear this endeavour — unveiled on 30 March in, bizarrely, the Daily Telegraph, Spain’s El Pais and France’s Le Monde — represents just more of the same top-down approach driven by vested interests.

To further drum home the message, Johnson and Health Secretary Matt Hancock yesterday announced that our very own Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance is to lead the Pandemic Preparedness Partnership, a new initiative tasked with revealing a strategy to the G7 summit in June.

This ‘partnership’ is like a roll call for Big Pharma: ex-GSK man Vallance at the top, senior figures from AstraZeneca, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, and Pfizer, along with representatives from COVAX, GAVI, WHO, the UK’s MHRA, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Scientific Advisory Committee.

We can be absolutely certain that our interests — yours, mine, those of the planet in general — are not uppermost in the minds of anyone in this partnership or on the WHO-led international treaty bandwagon.

We must redress this blatant imbalance and start working now towards an international treaty driven by equity, holistic outcomes and a long-term investment in public health.

Join me at 17:30​ UK time for the full lowdown on these initiatives.

Have you subscribed to the Pandemic Podcast mailing list? Please sign up here http://www.danjgregory.com/pandemic