A chara, – I refer to the letter (September 28th) from Bernard Mallee of the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association who argues that the Trade Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) waiver is not necessary to improve global access to Covid-19 vaccines and that pharmaceutical companies are already doing enough through voluntary technology transfer.
This is not consistent with the reality that only 3 per cent of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose.
Relying on pharmaceutical companies or high-income countries to fairly distribute vaccines is clearly not working. While the dose-sharing pledges by the EU and US are welcome, they are markedly insufficient and are dwarfed by vaccine hoarding and wastage. The Trips waiver would equip low- and middle-income countries with the independence to protect their own citizens.
Mallee also claims that a patent waiver would hurt pharmaceutical innovation in times of future public health crises, but yet it was massive public investment in innovation by academic institutions that funded Covid-19 vaccine discovery and minimised any investment risk. Despite this, manufacturers have made huge financial gains – profits from Covid-19 vaccine production have created nine new billionaires with a combined worth of $19.3 billion. Ethically, such prioritisation of profits over lives comes at a terrible human cost. Scientifically, for a pharmaceutical intervention to be effective in a pandemic it needs to be delivered to all populations worldwide. The Trips waiver, which is already supported by over 100 countries including the US, is required to vaccinate the world and bring the Covid-19 pandemic under control. – Yours, etc,
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Dr CIARA CONLAN,
Dr KIERAN HARKIN,
Dr CHRISTINE KELLY,
Prof SUSAN SMITH,
Founding members
of Doctors for
Vaccine Equity,
Swords,
Co Dublin.