Civil society groups warned that the intellectual property text currently being discussed for the COVID patent waiver is so far from the original proposal that it can’t even be called a waiver.
“We are extremely disappointed to see that even after 20 months of deliberations and more than 15 million deaths due to Covid, the negotiations are still eons away from ensuring access to lifesaving Covid medical tools for everyone, everywhere,” said Candice Sehoma, advocacy adviser for South Africa at Médecins Sans Frontières .
“The draft decision text is based on a problematic text from early May and is substantively different from the real waiver proposal we have been supporting,” Sehoma continued. “What we’re seeing so far is some limited changes, not real progress.” Upon their arrival in Geneva on Sunday, WTO ministers were greeted with protests demanding that they resist lobbying from the pharmaceutical industry and suspend coronavirus-related patents, a move that proponents say would enable low-income countries to produce their own coronavirus vaccinesThus far, Pfizer, Moderna, and other vaccine makers have closely guarded their patents and vaccine recipes, and the governments of wealthy countries have done little to force them to share despite...
“The text under negotiation at the WTO is not the TRIPS waiver that more than a hundred developing country governments have been fighting for, backed by a global movement of millions,” Anna Marriott of People’s Vaccine Alliance warned Sunday. “It would be unthinkable for the WTO to do nothing in a pandemic, but entirely unconscionable to agree to a deal that would make a bad situation even worse.”
“We are deeply concerned that rich nations are negotiating to protect the interests of pharmaceutical corporations, enabled by a WTO intent on saving its own reputation, whatever the cost to public health,” Marriott added.
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