Sir, – Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) responded to Covid-19 during the pandemic in more than 70 countries with testing, treatment and follow-up care.
From the start, we called for no patents, monopolies or profiteering on drugs, tests, or vaccines used in managing Covid-19. In late 2020, India and South Africa proposed the landmark Trips (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) waiver to suspend intellectual properties on Covid-19 vaccines and medical tools at the World Trade Organisation. Despite being supported by more than 100 countries, mostly in the Global South, the proposal was opposed and obstructed by a relatively small number of wealthier countries, including EU member states. In March, a revised draft of the proposal that had been under discussion by several governments was leaked. This draft appears to reflect the proposals made only by the EU and US and not those contained in the original version. By restricting the scope of the waiver to vaccines, excluding vitally important treatments and diagnostics, and by stipulating which countries can make use of it, this draft proposal does not provide a meaningful solution to increasing access to life-saving medical tools. Instead, it mostly points to mechanisms that already exist and which have been insufficient to address people’s needs during a pandemic.
MSF has decades of experience in treating epidemics. We know from other contexts that when there is systemic inequity in the supply of diagnostics, treatments and medical tools, it is the most vulnerable who suffer. We have seen the deep healthcare challenges that such inequity brings to these groups in the long term. It is our view that this proposed revised text is not the comprehensive intellectual property waiver that more than 100 countries have supported in the past year and a half and that Seanad Éireann unanimously passed a motion to support in December. In fact, this proposal would set a negative precedent for future global health challenges.
MSF, along with the People’s Vaccine Alliance in Ireland, urge WTO members to reject this text and to pursue a more ambitious outcome for a game-changing waiver that supports everyone, everywhere, for all medical tools, in line with the original proposal to help bring an equitable end to this pandemic. – Yours etc,
ISABEL SIMPSON,
Executive Director,
MSF Ireland,
Dublin 4.