Devinder Sharma

Food & Agriculture Specialist

This is disturbing. With only one-in-500 among the low-income countries having received the vaccine shot against one-in-four among the high-income countries, gross vaccine inequality has been at play. As per the World Health Organisation (WHO), poor countries have received only 0.2 per cent of the vaccine doses while the rich countries have walked away with a share of 87 per cent.

So far, only 32 per cent in America, 27 per cent in the UK, 2 per cent in India and 0.3 per cent of the population in the Philippines have received both doses. At this rate, it may take years before the world can emerge out of the pandemic. The rich need to understand they cannot remain safely isolated from the deadly virus till the poor too have got the protective shield.

What is coming in the way is the greed for more profits over public health. Instead of pushing for a speedier vaccination drive globally, a handful of vaccine manufacturers are actually using patent protection granted under the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to hold the world literally to ransom.

Not only the Big Pharma, but also some of the developed countries have been hoarding the vaccines and oppose any move to temporarily lift the patent protection. The US was hoarding 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which it has now decided to share with other countries. Notably, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had not approved the AstraZeneca vaccines (called Covishield in India) for domestic use, and, therefore, it made little sense to withhold it anymore.

Although India, South Africa and some other developing countries have petitioned the WTO to allow a waiver on patent protection for the Covid-19 vaccines, the rich trading bloc — the US, UK, EU, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Brazil and Australia — are averse to any such move, thereby denying these countries the access to technology to go in for large-scale production of the vaccines.

The pressure to oppose the IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) waiver comes from the pharmaceutical giants (and lobbyists) who have in a signed letter to the US President appealed to disregard the joint proposal put forward by India and South Africa, stating that it was without any evidence. It also urged the US Administration to continue to ‘oppose the TRIPs intellectual property waiver’. Hollywood, too, is siding with the pharmaceutical industry. The TRIPs Agreement provides for a patent monopoly for 20 years.

Although there exists a clause in the TRIPs Agreement that allows the developing countries the option of using compulsory licensing, enabling the governments at times of national emergencies to permit local manufacturers to use the patented technology without worrying about the patent monopoly, developing countries are reluctant to use the option, fearing trade retaliation. No wonder, despite even the Supreme Court mentioning the option of using Section 92 of the Indian Patents Act under which compulsory licences can be issued to manufacture a patented drug, there has not been any visible movement on that front.

Pfizer’s latest proposal says it has offered its vaccines to India at a ‘not-for-profit' price, but is quiet on the patent issue. It needs to be known that it was in February that TV channel WION had reported how the pharmaceutical giant was asking some Latin American countries for military bases and sovereign assets as a guarantee in exchange for supplying vaccines. It struck deals with seven countries, and was in negotiation with Argentina and Brazil.

To Argentina, it asked for putting its bank reserves, military bases and embassy buildings as collateral. It asked Brazil for military bases, sovereign assets and an international fund to write off any expenses arising from probable law suits. The deals fell through.

Even at that time, Pfizer Chairman Albert Bourla had in a press release claimed how the company was committed to providing equitable and affordable vaccines to people around the globe. It shows the double face of the pharmaceutical industry.

Moreover, it is not that the Covid-19 vaccines were produced with the company's own financial resources and inhouse research. These vaccines were, in fact, developed with public money support. For instance, the US, through its Operation Warp Speed, spent $12 billion to finance research, production and delivery of vaccines produced by a handful of companies. The UK Government had provided 84 million pounds for manufacturing support to the University of Oxford and Imperial College, London. As we all know, Oxford University later carved out a global licensing agreement with AstraZeneca. The German Government had given Pfizer’s German partner BioNTech close to $445 million.

Further, writing in Project Syndicate, economist Jeffrey D Sachs says: “The Intellectual Property held by Moderna, BioNTech-Pfizer, and others is not mainly the result of those companies' innovations, but rather of academic research funded by the US Government, especially the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The private companies are claiming the exclusive right to IP that was produced largely with public funding and academic science.”

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, too, has received brickbats for his recent statement opposing any move to transfer the vaccine technology to developing countries. To say that developing countries do not have the capability to effectively use the technology transfer is not true. There are a number of companies in India, Canada, South Africa and Brazil, among others, which have the potential to ramp up production. The IPR waiver can easily expedite the mass production of generics, making them cheaply available. That’s what the world needs at this critical juncture.

Well, Pfizer alone is expected to swell its vaccine profits this year by $15 billion. This comes at a time when a horrible surge in virus infections is likely to push hundreds of millions of people in Global South at risk for want of vaccines and that too cheap.

Let’s not forget, 3.22 million people have already perished worldwide from Covid-19. While the patent debate rages on, the big question is how the world can allow a handful of vaccine companies to profit over human lives.