Sir, – The decision of the US to back a waiver on intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines this week is a historic one. It has been welcomed by numerous countries, largely in Asia and Africa, who support such a waiver, as well as the huge number of NGOs and civil society groups, including Médecins Sans Frontières, who have long called for wealthy nations to back this proposal in the interests of global vaccine equity.
At home in Ireland, positive statements signalling support for a waiver from senior Irish Ministers such as Simon Coveney and Stephen Donnelly are encouraging.
As support grows across Europe, there have been indications of a shift in the EU’s firm opposition to the waiver in recent days.
Formal commitments of that support are now needed. There is no time to waste.
MSF teams are responding to the horrifying scenes in India, where the health system has been pushed to the brink of collapse.
All countries grappling with the pandemic need to be able to access the necessary vaccines, diagnostics and treatments in sufficient quantities to help avoid such disasters being repeated. While the waiver isn’t the silver bullet to end this pandemic, it can provide low- and middle-income countries with new ways of addressing legal uncertainties and barriers to the production and supply of Covid-19 vaccines and medical products.
The longer it takes to vaccinate everyone in the world, the greater the risk to us all as new variants have more opportunity to take hold.
Claims that intellectual property rights enabled the breakthrough in Covid-19 treatments are misleading. Public resources, philanthropic funding and the common cause of ending a deadly pandemic have been the main drivers of the unprecedented Covid-19 research and development efforts to date, not intellectual property rights.
Providing monopoly control over key health tools to a small number of corporations in a pandemic is unjustified and counterproductive. It’s now time for EU member states, including Ireland, to work together to ensure the intellectual property rights waiver is supported at the World Trade Organisation.
MSF calls on all countries still opposing this proposal to stand on the right side of history and put people’s health before pharmaceutical profits.
Ultimately, this is about saving lives, not protecting systems. – Yours, etc,
ISABEL SIMPSON,
Executive Director,
Médecins Sans
Frontières, Dublin 4.