Context: Analysing different strategies in realising mass vaccination as the way out of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Analysing the various strategies for achieving mass vaccination
Temporarily suspending patent rights: As pursued by India and South Africa through World Trade Organization (WTO), now even supported by the US.
Inefficacy of voluntary licensing (so far, no patent holders have joined these efforts) and patent pooling options has forced this legal discourse.
Compulsory licensing: It overrides patent rights to allow local production or import of drugs by generic manufacturers during a public health crisis.
The provision is enshrined in the Doha Declaration addendum to WTO’s TRIPS agreement;
The Doha addendum, Section 5c, o?ers AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis as examples of what quali?es as a health emergency, opening up way for Covid vaccines too, but has been ignored.
COVAX facility: Established to purchase vaccine doses and donate them to low-income countries, does not involve modifying patent rights. However, this option is marred with issues -
Underfunding: Similar ventures during the AIDS crisis were chronically underfunded and had only minor effects compared to voluntary licensing and mass production of antiretroviral drugs.
Inordinate delays: It is warned that people in the lowest-income countries might have to wait until 2022 to get vaccinated through this programme.
Voluntarily licensing of patented vaccine products: A patent holder voluntarily decides to license a product to other producers who are experienced at mass-producing low-cost medications.
This has been a proven strategy in ensuring accessibility of HIV/AIDS medication in low-income countries and has helped in bringing down the prices of essential drugs.
E.g. Drug Gilead, the first-line treatment for HIV/AIDS, has come down in price from $200-$500 per person per year to $39 per person per year in low-income countries, and now 13 India-based pharmaceutical companies are producing it.
The United Nations’ Medicines Patent Pool and the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool are some tools available to facilitate voluntary licensing.
Advantages:
Voluntary licences enable production to begin more expeditiously as they usually are accompanied by “technology transfer”.
Manufacturers in India prefer to work with voluntary licences because there is more goodwill between companies, while compulsory licences often come with a legal battle.
Way Forward:
Identifying the obligations of manufacturers:
The billions of dollars in government aid given to companies to help develop CO VID19 treatments should entail an obligation to enable the mass production of vaccines.
Patents are not ironclad ownership rights but temporary contracts that balance public interest with claims of the innovator.
It is not just a question of social justice but to prevent deadlier, more contagious and possibly vaccine-resistant variants.