On May 21, the European Commission and Italy host the Global Health Summit in Rome; from 24 May to 1 June, the member countries of the World Health Organization will meet for the annual assembly; and on June 2, Japan will host the Covax Amc Summit.
All these meetings will address the problem of controlling the Covid-19 pandemic, with – hopefully – a particular focus on the vaccination campaign. Indeed, pandemic control requires a global vaccination campaign, but most vaccine doses have so far only been administered in high-income countries. Why is the international community unable to correct this imbalance?
The extraordinary nature of the pandemic has stimulated ” extraordinary ” responses from various organisms. For example, the search for new vaccines has been supported by huge public funding. The European Medicines Agency and the US Food & Drug Administration have used “conditional” and “emergency” authorization to accelerate availability. But the world of commerce and intellectual property remains conservative.
A proposal submitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO) by India and South Africa to temporarily suspend the protection of intellectual property in the field of Covid-19 has received the support of a hundred countries including (limited to vaccines) the United States , but not that of the European Union. Yet the proposal is in line with Article IX of the founding text of the WTO, and responds to a real emergency situation, in which patent holders are unable to meet global needs.
The temporary suspension of patents would not take away a market from them, but would extend the possibility of production to others – possible in the short and medium term in high-income countries, and in others such as India, Indonesia, Thailand and Brazil. Furthermore, vaccines have been developed thanks to very important public funding, the contribution of which is not recognized by the patent system. Finally, the intention expressed by several countries to devolve their surplus to others is only partially useful, and only in a short-term logic.
The increase in production would be accelerated by a voluntary transfer of technologies, which has so far occurred in a very limited way (Astra Zeneca for example has transferred production capacity to the Serum Institute in India, which, however, must now meet the dramatic internal needs).
In May 2020, the “Technology Access Pool” (C-TAP) was created under the supervision of the World Health Organization, a platform for the voluntary sharing of technologies related to drugs, vaccines and diagnostics for Covid-19. . It is also a beneficial tool for patent holders, who would remain involved in managing shared licenses via the C-TAP. But so far no one has responded to this appeal, while the fight against the pandemic is becoming more complicated due to the emergence of new variants.
We need courageous and innovative decisions to reorient the fight against Covid-19 in the sense of a collective challenge. These are morally and pragmatically unavoidable choices. Morally, because health is a human right. Pragmatically, because the pockets of “ non-vaccination ” create the conditions for new variants that circulate freely, such as goods. The temporary suspension of patents would give a strong message that the world of global health, politics, industry and commerce are united in the fight against the pandemic; and it would accelerate the possibility of increasing production capacities for global vaccination.
* Claudia Lodesani, president of MSF Italy
* Raffaella Ravinetto, Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, and former president of MSF Italy
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