Pandemic is a global crisis and the extraordinary condition of making vaccines available in the entire world requires fabulous steps. WTO or Intellectual Property Protection (IPP) is very important in itself but humanity come much before that and that’s when proponents of the waiver argued that the temporary suspension of intellectual property rights is key to achieving vaccine equity and global health security. This must be a welcome step, there will be opposition but certainly opposition which is business oriented will be in favor of humanity. Basically, patent waiver would be a valuable panacea. A fair proposal would mostly allow countries to issue compulsory licenses, essentially allowing third-party manufacturers to make and sell other companies’ patented products, while also helping free up some information about how that manufacturing is done. Just a waiver of the IP rights rules without further assistance such as technology transfer to generic pharmaceutical companies in developing countries would render the move useless. This will also necessitate tech transfer for the pharmaceutical companies to start the production since vaccines like the mRNA vaccines require highly sophisticated manufacturing equipment. Not only technology and equipment, raw materials and probably personnel would also need to be transferred for developing countries to be able to produce vaccines on a large scale. Lastly, this move marks the start of the battle, not the end of the war. Much remains to be resolved before the waiver is translated into increased vaccine supply. Complex vaccines require deep cooperation between developers and manufacturers. Any failure to make them properly could undermine public confidence and safety.
Shafi Ahmed Khowaja
Hyderabad
Covid-19 vaccine patent waiver
