Temporary waiver of TRIPS agreement must to vaccinate the world  

Four health experts along, with a Nobel Laureate and a politician, in an article argued for a temporary waiver of the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement to meet the number of doses of vaccinations required to achieve global herd immunity against the Covid-19.

 Titled "Intellectual Property Waiver for Covid-19 Vaccines Will Advance Global Health Equity," the article has been published in the British Medical Journal on August 3, 2021, according to a press statement issued in Dhaka on Monday.

The authors of the article include: Parsa Erfani, Fogarty global health scholar, Harvard Medical School, USA; Agnes Binagwaho, vice chancellor,  University of Global Health Equity, Rwanda; Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh, vice president,  Sierra Leone; Muhammad Yunus, chair,  Yunus Centre, Bangladesh; Paul Farmer, professor,  Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, USA; and Vanessa Kerry, associate professor, Division of Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, USA.

 The article stated the  current vaccination figures show that the percentage of vaccinated people in high income countries is 46 per cent while the figure is 20 per cent in middle income countries and 0.9 per cent in low income countries. This is largely due to acquisition of doses by high income countries in large quantities as well as production being restricted to a small number of manufacturers.

The article also stated a clear scarcity of supply exists due to intellectual property (IP) protection which currently restricts production and access to the vaccines. 

“Donor based models have not worked in reaching the highest risk population, due to underfunding and vaccine scarcity,” it argued. “To meet the current global needs it is necessary to also have production of vaccines in LMICs. A temporary waiver will enable more manufacturers and result in yielding doses faster.” 

It also mentioned that the arguments against the waiver include, that LMICs have limited capacity to produce such complex vaccines, that a move like this could stifle further biomedical innovation and funding into such research, as there would be no return on investment and cause bottlenecks in the supply chain. “However, data does not support this,” said the authors.

“Sharing of the technology and the technical know-how is crucial in helping to expand production to meet global needs,” they argued. “There are LMICs who have production capacity for complex Covid-19 vaccine production. With the IP waiver, and sharing of all vaccine related knowledge and technology as well as planning, bottlenecks in raw materials can be avoided.”

They also pointed out that the waiver would be temporary thus only affecting the Covid-19 vaccine, and many of the costs of research and development have been recouped.

There has also been publicly funded research that laid the ground work for the vaccine. Keeping all things in mind, this seems to be the best way forward in meeting global needs.

“Now, it is important that countries need to agree on a temporary IP waiver, in order to ensure the world's population can receive the vaccinations, achieving global herd immunity and facilitating global health equity,” they added.

The full article is available at: https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1837.full