The World Trade Organization's 12th Ministerial Conference ended Friday with an agreement on patent rights that campaigners said would do virtually nothing to address vast global inequities in coronavirus vaccine and treatment access, a failure they attributed to relentless obstruction by rich countries and the pharmaceutical industry. To date, just 18% of people in low-income countries have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose.
Dr. Christos Christou, international president of Doctors Without Borders, added that while "a few changes were made" to an earlier draft text that advocates panned, the final agreement "fails overall to offer an effective and meaningful solution to help increase people's access to needed medical tools during the pandemic as it does not adequately waive intellectual property on all essential Covid-19 medical tools, and it does not apply to all countries."
"The measures outlined in the decision," Christou added, "will not address pharmaceutical monopolies or ensure affordable access to lifesaving medical tools and will set a negative precedent for future global health crises and pandemics."
One conference attendee, Anna Marriott of Oxfam International, said she heard that some national delegations did not even get a chance to see the text before it was adopted by the WTO.
After marathon negotiations, the narrow deal clarifies governments' ability to use compulsory licensing to ramp up vaccine production without the consent of patent-holding pharmaceutical companies. The agreement also temporarily eases restrictions on the export of vaccines produced under compulsory licenses.
"The conduct of rich countries at the WTO has been utterly shameful," said Max Lawson, co-chair of the People's Vaccine Alliance. "The E.U. has blocked anything that resembles a meaningful intellectual property waiver. The U.K. and Switzerland have used negotiations to twist the knife and make any text even worse. And the U.S. has sat silently in negotiations with red lines designed to limit the impact of any agreement."
"This so-called compromise largely reiterates developing countries' existing rights to override patents in certain circumstances," Lawson added. "And it tries to restrict even that limited right to countries which do not already have capacity to produce Covid-19 vaccines. Put simply, it is a technocratic fudge aimed at saving reputations, not lives."
The coronavirus has killed an estimated 30,000 people each day on average since India and South Africa unveiled their proposal in October 2020. The two nations' waiver plan was backed by more than 100 WTO member countries, but rich governments derailed every attempted advancement of the text, offering alternatives that would leave in place—and even bolster—intellectual property restrictions that have hindered vaccine production throughout the pandemic. The pharmaceutical industry, which has raked in huge profits throughout the deadly pandemic, also lobbied aggressively against India and South Africa's proposed waiver.
"Once again, the shameful, undemocratic WTO process allowed rich countries representing corporate interests to strongarm a sham agreement that bears no resemblance to the original waiver proposal and will do nothing to help save lives for this or future pandemics," said Melinda St. Louis, Global Trade Watch director at Public Citizen.
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