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The World Health Organization is working to restart the intellectual property sharing scheme, as the shortage of vaccines threatens attempts to lift poorer countries out of the pandemic and as the debate over patents intensifies.
In a letter released Thursday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada called on member states to contact IP manufacturers to promote IP sharing and technology transfer through the scheme.
“The most important priority for the global community is to stop the pandemic in its path, stop its rapid transmission and reverse the trend of global distress as a result,” they wrote. “We know that this goal can be achieved when everyone, anywhere, can access the health technologies they need to detect, prevent, treat and respond to Covid-19.”
Costa Rica WHO launched the C-Tap (Covid-19 technology access pool) last year for Covid vaccines, testing and drugs, but the initiative it has not attracted enough interest from higher-income nations and the pharmaceutical industry.
In an unexpected move this month, the U.S. offered generic support for a separate vaccine waiver of patent. But observers have said the move, while symbolically significant, does nothing to address the technicalities needed to see it through.
For its part, the pharmaceutical industry has maintained its efforts to share its trade secrets, stating that patents and the monopolies they create are necessary to protect the risky investments needed to bring drugs to market. Most Covid drugs and almost all western Covid vaccines have been developed with the help of some taxpayer money.
Essentially, it would be based on the voluntary merger of C-Tap, IP and trade secrets, which is also backed by Spain today, by offering companies compensation through royalties. It would also use an expanded model for the manufacture and distribution of HIV, hepatitis C, and tuberculosis drugs, and make poorer countries less dependent on foreign aid and multinational corporations.
The WHO believes that if vaccinators adhered to the scheme, the world would have a greater availability of shootings by the end of next year. Today, there is a big difference when it comes to getting vaccines.
As of Monday, the number of doses sent by Covax vaccine schemes was 70m – enough for less than 0.5 percent of the combined population in the 124 countries it serves.
In the short term, the C-Tap scheme would encourage the manufacture of tests and drugs needed to halt the spread of pollution and reduce deaths where they are large.
Tedros has called for more knowledge to be shared from the beginning of the pandemic, with the goal of balancing long-term health inequalities.
“It took us 10 years to do it [HIV] antiretrovials available to low- and middle-income countries, they needed them the most. By then millions of people had been killed, “he told the Financial Times.” We can’t reproduce a similar watershed. It would be ethical, but also myopia. “
“Those who don’t help with these [global solidarity] efforts are effectively helping to prolong the crisis. “
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