“Vaccine nationalism” has fast become a catchphrase of the year of the pandemic, with several countries expressing fears that leaders will prioritise their own nations at the expense of the rest of the world.
SA and India are now trying to stave this off by suggesting a patent ban so access to vaccines and treatment for Covid-19 is fair.
A paper published in The Lancet says the two countries have “called for the World Trade Organization (WTO) to suspend intellectual rights related to Covid-19 to ensure that not only the wealthiest countries will be able to access and afford vaccines, medicines and other new technologies needed to control the pandemic”.
But many high-income countries and the pharmaceutical industry “are staunchly opposed to the move”, saying it will “stifle innovation when it is needed most”, according to the paper.
Researcher-writer Ann Danaiya Usher said the proposal states that intellectual property rights such as patents are obstructing affordable Covid-19 medical products and that a temporary ban “would allow multiple actors to start production sooner, instead of having manufacturing in the hands of a small number of patent holders”.
Mustaqeem De Gama, counsellor at the South African permanent mission to the WTO, who helped write the proposal, said: “What this waiver proposal does is open space for further collaboration, for the transfer of technology and for more producers to come in to ensure that we have scalability in a much shorter period of time.”
The UK, US, Canada, Norway and the EU have “rejected it [the proposal] outright”, saying it disincentivises those behind new inventions, according to Usher, while dozens of low- and middle-income countries support it.
The EU released a statement saying: “There is no evidence that intellectual property rights in any way hamper access to Covid-19-related medicines and technologies.”
The issue highlights the age-old tension between medicine for money and medicine for the wellbeing of as many people as possible.
When the patent waiver proposal was first presented to the WTO, SA arrived armed with a case study to illustrate the point: in India, a spat developed between Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Pfizer about its pneumococcal vaccine, where “a patent has blocked development of alternative versions of the vaccine”, according to the paper in The Lancet.
Yuanqiong Hu, a senior adviser in the MSF Access Campaign, is quoted in the publication as saying that the SA-India proposal would “also make it easier for non-patent holders to produce necessary medical equipment like ventilators, masks and protective gear”.
Regarding the need for technology transfers, it is not an “either/or” question, she says. “Governments need the full package of tool kits, including technology transfer deals and legal measures such as the patent ban,” according to The Lancet.
So what happens now? Said Usher: “Given the entrenched positions on the proposal, reaching a consensus ... is unlikely.”
Theoretically, it could go to a vote, but that would be a first.
De Gama concurred. “It would be difficult to go in the direction of vote, but that’s not the only mechanism we have,” he said, adding that SA “hopes to elevate the issue to the WTO general council and to spur a broader debate on public health issues in general”.
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