WHO has supported initiative to suspend patents in the manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines

The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on Friday supported the proposal to suspend patents for vaccines, treatments and other health tools against COVID-19, which is being debated this week in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

“It’s time to use all the tools at our disposal to be able to increase production, which includes transferring licenses and exempting intellectual property rights. It’s now or never, ”Tedros said at a press conference.

The head of WHO provided this support three days after this initiative was again debated at the WTO General Councillaunched in October by India and South Africa and which for months has found opposition among many countries where Big Pharma is headquartered.

Among them are United States, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom and the states of the European Union.

If approved, the exemption would allow copies of COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, diagnostic tests, and other drugs may begin to be produced in other countries, on a large scale and at lower prices.

Tedros also called on the most advanced countries on Friday to reduce or avoid more unilateral agreements for the purchase of vaccines with pharmaceutical companies, especially those in the COVAX program dose distributors around the world (like AstraZeneca or Pfizer, although the CEO did not refer to it directly).

“I understand that governments have an obligation to protect their own, but the best way to do this is to remove the coronavirus at the same time everywhere “, argument.

Wednesday, The governments of Mexico and Argentina have called for no country in Latin America to be left without access to covid-19 vaccines, in a joint statement released after Argentine President Alberto Fernández’s visit.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of keeping Latin America and the Caribbean strong, united and united, where no country in the region is excluded from universal, fair, equitable and rapid access drugs, vaccines and medical supplies, ”the document says, in line with the WHO statement.

The two governments added that they will continue to collaborate “so that the region achieves self-sufficiency in vaccine production and that these are seen as global commons, as well as their patents“.

In the same vein, the Deputy Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) expressed this week, Jarbas Barbosa, who supported declaration of covid-19 vaccines as a global good.

Asked at a press conference whether PAHO, the regional office of the World Health Organization (WHO), considers Argentina’s proposal to be viable, Barbosa recalled that this debate between intellectual property and public health needs is not new in countries.

“I think a position like this is still important, from Argentina, many countries in the region, to seek to consider a tool as important as a vaccine against a pandemic as a global public good,” did he declare. “This concern is very important”, he repeated.

The current health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed many countries, especially the poorest, into “Hostages” of pharmaceutical companies, who impose prices, delays in delivery of doses and even demand legal immunityrepresentatives of various NGOs denounced Thursday at a press conference.

“Many governments in Latin America, for example, are at the mercy of pharmaceutical companies, and are forced to accept all conditions», Deplored in this regard the coordinator of the Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines of Médecins sans frontières (MSF) in Brazil, Felipe De Carvalho.

a human rights lawyer Fatima Hassan, from the Health Justice Initiative, added that these countries “must accept limited distribution, artificially created scarcity, pay the prices they are charged and on top of that they allow secrecy and agreements that exonerate them. of responsibility “.

De Carvalho pointed out that this situation has caused that in countries like Brazil or Mexico had to interrupt vaccination campaigns due to lack of doses, which the Brazilian government paid higher prices than its European counterparts for AstraZeneca vaccines, or that pharmaceutical companies have asked Argentina to change its laws in exchange for the distribution of their vaccines.

This, they warned, is happening in regions that have some of the highest COVID-19 death rates on the planet, such as Latin America or Africa, where many health networks and hospitals are in ruins and many workers in the sector, exhausted, have no prospect of being able to be vaccinated in the short term.

With information from EFE and AFP

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