Glad to share another short piece on the TRIPS waiver discussion, originally published in the Blog of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung’s (RLS) Geneva office  in April 2022 . Unfortunately this piece has not aged well, as the outcome of the mobilization spear-headed by India and South Africa and shouldered and pushed forward by a wide coalition of civil society groups did not achieve (by far) the desired goals.

Breaking the cycle of profits and patents in a pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic, which brought in its wake so much heartache and turmoil, did not happen in a vacuum, but within already established structures of social inequity and patterns of political imbalance. The development and subsequent procurement of vaccines followed—and continues to follow—a trend whereby the wealthy were the first to access medical technologies, while the rest were forced to wait and hope for the best. A profit-driven biomedical research and development model and the important role that intellectual property (IP) plays in the business strategies of large, transnational pharmaceutical companies were also strong winds for the perfect storm.

Solidarity is never as close and necessary to survival as when a threat, like a pandemic, makes no distinction between border or wealth, and no country would escape unscathed. The response from the international community veered from the hefty words in the early days of the pandemic proclaiming vaccines to be global public goods, to the ensuing confusing multiplication of initiatives with lofty ambitions of global distribution of vaccines. Finally, we settled on the realization that, for the European Union and other pharma-friendly governments, even in such unprecedented times, it would be business as usual when it comes to IP and access to health technologies.

La Salut Global que no era o com la pandemia ens ha despullat de certeses i veritats impostades.

La actual pandèmia ens ha obligat com a individus i societats a replantejar-nos qüestions fonamentals de la nostra existència: prioritats, valors i expectatives s´han vist trasbalsades i capgirades. La sacsejada ha arribat fins a les nocions fonamentals de l´anomenada salut global, elements que davant un fenomen universal, per definició transfronterer i de naturalesa indiscriminada, haurien hagut de servir com a base de tota resposta articulada al voltant de l'interès general i el bé comú. 

La presidenta de la Comissió Europea Ursula von der Leyen s´ha caracteritzat des de l´inici de la pandèmia per seguir el dictat del govern alemany especialment en la negociació d´acords exclusius amb la industria farmacèutica i la oposició a mesures per limitar la protecció de drets de propietat intel·lectual en productes necessaris per a la lluita contra la pandèmia. Font de la fotografia EU seals deal with Pfizer-BioNTech for up to 1.8 billion vaccine doses Euronews 8 Maig 2021

La gran majoria d´actors, des de els Estats a les organitzacions internacionals i la industria farmacèutica passant per la societat civil organitzada  no han estat capaços de coordinar-se al voltant d´objectius com l'accés universal a tecnologies sanitàries, la necessitat de prioritzar l´atenció en grups de població en situació de vulnerabilitat i l´imperatiu moral de compartir tecnologia i coneixements per acabar amb la pandèmia. 

A pandemic response lacking moral leadership.

 Post originally published in Health Action International (HAI) page in March 2021

 

In October 2020, eight months after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, India and South Africa submitted a proposal for a temporary waiver on certain articles of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) TRIPS Agreement. This so-called TRIPS waiver would cover patents, industrial designs and copyright among other Intellectual Property (IP) protection elements of COVID-19-related health technologies, including vaccines

Support for the TRIPS waiver has extended through the Global South while wealthier countries remain fiercely opposed to even discussing the merits of the proposal. Source

Rich countries must join the world in supporting the TRIPS waiver to end the pandemic People´s Health Movement.

The idea has since been welcomed and supported by many governments at WTO (57 are now co-sponsors), civil society from across the world, and other stakeholders, such as researchers and economists. Yet it has been met with a mixture of incredulity and hostility from pharma and a small group of countries, who have spared no effort to stifle any debate on the merits of the proposal.