Covid Vaccine - People’s Vaccine or Profit Vaccine?
Finance 16-Mar-2021
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A handful of developed countries once again blocked the proposal to waive off Intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines and other medical tools at the WTO (World Trade Organisation) meeting held last week. It was the eight time that this issue has been discussed at WTO without reaching an agreement. Since World Trade Organisation is a consensus driven body, the decision to waive TRIPS will be taken only unanimously and not based on majority. It is now being deferred till June 2021 when two meetings of WTO members are planned. Is deferring the decision by three more months going to help in the fight against Coronavirus? This is an important question that should arose in the minds of the governments which are rejecting this proposal.
India and South Africa had submitted a proposal to WTO in October 2020 to TEMPORARILY waive off the patent costs on the much-needed Covid testing kits, medical apparatus, lifesaving drugs etc to make them equally available to the poorer nations of the world in their fight against the virus. The proposal has now been backed by nearly 57 underdeveloped or developing nations with more supporting it each passing day. This waiver will help increase the supply of vaccines and medical equipment to these nations and will prove to be a decisive move in the war against the newly detected virus.
Developed countries like USA, Canada, Australia, EU, UK, Japan have shockingly REJECTED the proposal time and again. The reasons cited for rejection by most of them being IP waiver on life saving essential drugs would hinder future inventions in development of vaccines, treatments, and technologies. The private pharma companies (which have developed the vaccines by using majority of public money and run trials for their efficacy in developing countries) are also pressurizing these countries against backing the waiver. It is heartening to see that these countries are of the belief that vaccinating their population from one corner of the world will help eradicate this virus from the face of the earth. The war against this invisible enemy cannot be fought alone but will be won only if it is fought by one and sundry AT THE SAME TIME. This continued failure of WTO to reach a consensus, even though a huge majority is supporting the move, still suggests that the word of colonial powers still has more weightage at the WTO than the nations which they once colonised.
During the meeting, South African delegates compared the current equivocation to the HIV AIDS pandemic, which had claimed nearly 11 million lives in the African continent in part due to lack of access to treatment. The delegates rightly pointed that the huge loss of lives was partially the fault of unethical pharmaceutical company practices.
It took an Indian pharmacist Dr. Yusuf K. Hamied, chairman of Cipla, to rescue the impoverished African nations by supplying AIDS drugs at almost half the price that was charged by western pharmaceuticals. Cipla joind hands with Doctors without Borders (an advisory group which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999) to supply life-saving HIV drugs at affordable prices to patients in some of the world's poorest nations. The typical AIDS cocktail a combination of three drugs which was being sold in the west was priced from anywhere around $10,000 to $15,000 for a year’s supply. It was sold by Cipla at $350 for a year’s medicine to the advisory group. Such a low price was even below the breakeven point of $600 for Cipla. It relied on scale of operations to reduce its costs and breakeven.
India and South Africa had submitted a proposal to WTO in October 2020 to TEMPORARILY waive off the patent costs on the much-needed Covid testing kits, medical apparatus, lifesaving drugs etc to make them equally available to the poorer nations of the world in their fight against the virus. The proposal has now been backed by nearly 57 underdeveloped or developing nations with more supporting it each passing day. This waiver will help increase the supply of vaccines and medical equipment to these nations and will prove to be a decisive move in the war against the newly detected virus.
Developed countries like USA, Canada, Australia, EU, UK, Japan have shockingly REJECTED the proposal time and again. The reasons cited for rejection by most of them being IP waiver on life saving essential drugs would hinder future inventions in development of vaccines, treatments, and technologies. The private pharma companies (which have developed the vaccines by using majority of public money and run trials for their efficacy in developing countries) are also pressurizing these countries against backing the waiver. It is heartening to see that these countries are of the belief that vaccinating their population from one corner of the world will help eradicate this virus from the face of the earth. The war against this invisible enemy cannot be fought alone but will be won only if it is fought by one and sundry AT THE SAME TIME. This continued failure of WTO to reach a consensus, even though a huge majority is supporting the move, still suggests that the word of colonial powers still has more weightage at the WTO than the nations which they once colonised.
During the meeting, South African delegates compared the current equivocation to the HIV AIDS pandemic, which had claimed nearly 11 million lives in the African continent in part due to lack of access to treatment. The delegates rightly pointed that the huge loss of lives was partially the fault of unethical pharmaceutical company practices.
It took an Indian pharmacist Dr. Yusuf K. Hamied, chairman of Cipla, to rescue the impoverished African nations by supplying AIDS drugs at almost half the price that was charged by western pharmaceuticals. Cipla joind hands with Doctors without Borders (an advisory group which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999) to supply life-saving HIV drugs at affordable prices to patients in some of the world's poorest nations. The typical AIDS cocktail a combination of three drugs which was being sold in the west was priced from anywhere around $10,000 to $15,000 for a year’s supply. It was sold by Cipla at $350 for a year’s medicine to the advisory group. Such a low price was even below the breakeven point of $600 for Cipla. It relied on scale of operations to reduce its costs and breakeven.
During the AIDS crisis, the western pharmaceuticals argued that doctors were needed to carefully monitor the levels of the drug in the patient’s body, for any signs of organ damage and continuously monitor the levels of the virus in the blood. If the virus mutates it would resist the treatment and the combination of the medicines would have to be changed. They argued that meticulous monitoring of patients would not be possible in many African countries due to lack of infrastructure and trained medical staff. But with the havoc that the HIV virus was spreading in the African continent and in many southern countries, it was rightly argued then, that imperfect treatment was better than no treatment at all. Today with the global spread of Coronavirus, a similar gridlock is being experienced where the developed nations are preventing the reach of Covid fighting medicines to poorer southern nations.
Many support groups such as Doctors without Borders, Médecins Sans Frontières responded to the latest inaction with indignation. Many in the US congress including Sen. Bernie Sanders also urged President Biden to reverse the US opposition to the waiver proposal. Many economists, academics, and business leaders in UK in an open letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson have urged him to rethink his decision to reject the waiver proposal.
A few SELF-APPOINTED custodians of democratic and human values in the developed countries should first understand that when you point fingers at a country by downgrading its democracy to electoral autocracy, you should first look at the three fingers which are pointing back at you and are the mirror of your inactions. India has till date gifted and exported more than 50 million doses of vaccine to nearly 70 countries around the world. How many of the western countries, the frontrunners in the vaccination drive gifted even one dose to any other country? Their sheer audacity to denigrate the reputation of India only puts them in bad light and project them as sore losers in Vaccine diplomacy.
The more the time spent on debating the proposal, the more the delay it will cause in a united effort to move on and put Coronavirus past us. It is time for the global north to rethink their perspective of extreme capitalism and extreme communism and keep human beings at the center of their public policy.
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