Temporary waiver of IP rights can 'meet global vaccine needs': Dr Yunus in UK journal
An article, authored by Parsa Erfani, Agnes Binagwaho, Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh, Muhammad Yunus, Paul Farmer, and Vanessa Kerry, has been published in the British Medical Journal.
The paper titled "Intellectual property waiver for Covid-19 vaccines will advance global health equity" was published on 3rd August 2021, focuses on the importance of a temporary IP waiver to reach global needs.
According to the article, the current vaccination figures show that the percentage of people in high-income countries who have been vaccinated is 46%, while 20% in middle-income countries and 0.9% in low-income countries. This is largely due to the acquisition of doses by high-income countries in large quantities as well as production being restricted to a small number of manufacturers.
The article states that a clear scarcity of supply exists due to intellectual property (IP) protection which currently restricts production and access to the vaccines.
The authors believe donor-based models have not worked in reaching the highest-risk population due to underfunding and vaccine scarcity. To meet the current global needs, it is necessary to produce vaccines in LMICs. A temporary waiver will enable more manufacturers and result in yielding doses faster.
There are arguments against the waiver, which the article acknowledges, including 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.
Sharing the technology and the technical know-how is crucial in expanding production to meet global needs. Some LMICs have the necessary production capacity for complex Covid-19 vaccines. With the IP waiver, and sharing of all vaccine-related knowledge and technology as well as planning, bottlenecks in raw materials can be avoided.
The waiver would be temporary, and can only influence policy regarding the Covid-19 vaccine, informs the study. There has also been publicly funded research that laid the groundwork for the vaccine.
The authors urged all countries to agree on a temporary IP waiver, to ensure that the world's population can receive vaccinations, achieve global herd immunity and facilitate global health equity.
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