KARACHI:
The Covid-19 vaccine is here, finally. But procuring the vaccine alone is not enough for eliminating the virus until we put people before profits. Making the lifesaving vaccine accessible to the masses shouldn’t be a legal nightmare. Unfortunately, the issue of patent protection to incentivise innovation has now taken precedence.
The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of WTO provides patent protection to medicinal innovations including vaccines. The system is intended at ensuring companies exclusive monopoly for a specified time on the distribution of their products as a way to incentivise their innovation and also to compensate for their investments in research and development.
The underlying assumption here is that without a proper incentivising system, pharmaceuticals and the private sector just won’t innovate at all. But we need to understand that profit is not the only driver of innovation. Jonas Salk could have made millions out of the polio vaccine but he chose not to patent it because he and his team were motivated to save lives. “There is no patent. Could you Patent the sun?”, Salk said in his famous interview implying that the vaccine belonged to the people and patenting it will be unethical — just like patenting the sun.
Ironically enough, such IP rights not only negate WHO’s goals of including protection of public health and the human right to health but also result in higher drug prices and limit their distribution. Such laws should permanently or temporarily be scrapped. Especially in the face of a pandemic that has been killing roughly 10,000 people each day.
Universal no-cost or low-cost access to the vaccines is central to the rapid eradication of the coronavirus and similar pandemics that are yet to come. Letting unbridled capitalism determine the distribution of vaccine will needlessly risk the lives of millions of people. With so much at stake, relying on a profit-driven health-care system undermines the health and safety for all.
Naeem Uddin
Karachi
Published in The Express Tribune, February 4th, 2021.
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