WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Trump administration’s terms for sharing pathogen information in health deals with African states are unfair and threaten to undermine the core equity bargain of the WHO Pandemic Agreement negotiations, according to a Public Citizen analysis of seven newly released State Department texts.
The terms would require African states to share viral samples and pathogen information with the U.S. and allow the U.S. 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.
The State Department is signing the specimen deals in connection with foreign aid funding agreements pursuant to its “America First Global Health Strategy,” which are intended to restore some of the health aid decimated by Trump administration cuts last year. A template specimen sharing agreement was published in late 2025. This is the first analysis of specimen sharing agreements that have been signed, showing what terms countries were able to negotiate.
