As negotiations on the WHO Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing System continue, ACHGJ argues that its success cannot be measured only by how fast pathogen data moves between countries. National health systems decide who is financed, supplied and treated, and these decisions are shaped by gender and structural inequality that a global allocation deal cannot fix on its own. Implementation must therefore guarantee transparent national allocation, count health system capacity as a form of benefit sharing, require data broken down by sex and age, bring communities and women’s organisations into preparedness planning, and ensure lasting benefit for the countries that share pathogen data. The real test of PABS is national: whether women and excluded communities actually gain access, and whether health systems grow stronger, not simply how much data is shared.
