PRESS RELEASE, 30th November

Call for action on vaccine inequality

The COVID-19 pandemic has killed at least five million people and impoverished hundreds of millions more. Deep ruptures have been exposed between the Global North and South, the rich and the poor, the privileged and the vulnerable. 

The  result of this is vaccine apartheid, as limited access to vaccines and therapeutics has been to the detriment of the Global South.Only 4.5% of people in low-income countries have been vaccinated in contrast to over 61% of European and 67% percent of U.S. populations. Currently, there simply are not enough vaccines, tests and treatments manufactured and supplied to low-income countries. Leaving large proportions of the world unvaccinated will lead to unmitigated COVID-19 transmission, creating ideal circumstances for new variants which could threaten the effectiveness of vaccines everywhere and prolong the pandemic.

To date, world leaders including Irish and EU politicians have no credible plan to end the pandemic, even though the path to do so is clear. Ensuring global access for all to vaccines, life-saving therapeutics, diagnostics and other medical tools is the only way to end the pandemic.

One reason for vaccine shortages/vaccine inequity is the intellectual property (IP) monopolies that empower pharmaceutical corporations to control how much is produced, where it is produced and allocated, and at what price it is sold. A few pharmaceutical corporations have benefitted from tens of billions in Government funded research and direct subsidies. Yet almost two years into the pandemic, these firms’ limited  production capacity and their refusal to share technologies IP rights have resulted in limited global supply, concentrated in high income countries.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) requires countries to enforce these monopolies, creating significant obstacles to addressing public health emergencies, like the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, while high income countries’ Governments have the capacity to compel these pharmaceutical companies to share their knowledge and IP rights, so far they have failed to utilize the legal and policy tools available to them. If IP and manufacturing know-how were shared, manufacturing capacity could quickly be ramped up. According to research by Knowledge Ecology International, more than 140 factories globally could be repurposed to produce COVID-19 vaccines. 

The need for increasing and diversifying production in developing countries is intensified by limited vaccine supply now being prioritized for rich country booster shots, while most low- and middle-income countries have not received their first doses. A waiver of WTO intellectual property barriers would help to facilitate sustainable production and supply of vaccines, treatments  and diagnostic tests essential to ending this global pandemic.  

Pharmaceutical companies have had the opportunity since May 2020 to share patents and other intellectual property rights through the WHO Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP). A second opportunity arose in June 2021 when the WHO announced it was working to establish an mRNA technology transfer hub, but the failure of industry to engage with such voluntary sharing mechanisms has increased pressure for mandatory measures. In October 2020, the Indian and South African governments made a landmark proposal to temporarily waive several sections of the WTO TRIPS agreement in relation to COVID-19 health technologies to help countries address the pandemic and end global shortages of vaccines and other technologies

Yet, a full year has passed since a temporary waiver for COVID-19 products was first proposed, and unnecessary deaths have continued while the European Union, Switzerland, Canada,Norway and the United Kingdom have blocked the adoption supported by the majority of WTO’s members

We are highlighting this issue along with civil society, labour and professional organizations around the world leading up to and during the ministerial, to put pressure on governments to agree to a TRIPS waiver. Pharmaceutical corporations are relying on the few countries that remain opposed to block a waiver and instead promote meaningless “declarations” about trade and health. Currently and shamefully Ireland as an EU member has failed to support the waiver. This is a moral failure that ignores the right to health of many living in the Global South and will result in unnecessary suffering and death

We call on the Irish State to act to enable low and middle-income countries build capacity to provide their citizens with protection and treatment for Covid-19 and reduce the reliance on the capricious charity of high-income countries that is inadequate to deal with a pandemic. We need to act urgently now and support the TRIPS waiver because it is the right thing to prevent suffering and death - and it is the only thing to do to try to end this current pandemic.

All eyes will be on world leaders and their trade ministers at the Nov. 30 - Dec. 3 WTO ministerial conference to see if they are willing and able to take concrete action to adopt a temporary TRIPS waiver and remove IP barriers to upscaling COVID-19 vaccine,therapeutics and diagnostic production underlying today's global supply shortage. To save lives we will keep fighting for the necessary waiver until it is adopted and implemented. The ministerial is a key global meeting when the TRIPS waiver could be finalized. We call on the Irish delegation to support it fully and strenuously.   

Media contacts:

Access to Medicines Ireland - Prof Susi Geiger susi.geiger@ucd.ie, Tel. 087 2851770

Amnesty International 

Oxfam