Even as the specter of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic lingers, SunMUN XVI asks World Health Assembly delegates to consider a different threat to world health: neglected tropical diseases. Affecting well over a billion people, these pathogens have flourished at the intersection of poverty and weak infrastructure. Addressing the infrastructure needs, healthcare planning, and research funding needed to combat these diseases is critical to the mission of the World Health Assembly and demand delegates to work creatively to reconcile the fact that neglected tropical diseases receive only a fraction of global health funding. What can be done to combat their spread? What role does the World Health Assembly have in guiding the developing safe infrastructure for the purposes of public health?

That said, the risk of far-reaching outbreaks has increased in recent years, and research on orthopoxviruses—in particular, smallpox—continues. Recent outbreaks have exposed dramatic weaknesses in surveillance, stockpiling, and access to medical countermeasures, propelling issues of research access and development to the international stage. Orthopoxvirus research is heavily restricted and has been since the global eradication of smallpox in 1980; in fact, since 1980, only the United States Centers for Disease Control and the Russian VECTOR laboratory have been permitted to continue smallpox research. What does equitable access to medical technology mean? Who or what decides the line between safe research and necessary research?