Less IP is needed for adequate disease readiness

Compromise must be found. Without a treaty, the world will remain as unprepared for the next pandemic as it was for COVID-19, which killed roughly 7 million people and cost the global economy more than US$12 trillion. But there can be no compromise on one thing: there must be equity in access to vaccines, medicines and other supplies needed to save lives. This issue has been the chief sticking point in the negotiations so far. To break the deadlock, countries must commit to licensing the intellectual property (IP) and sharing the knowledge needed to make vaccines and drugs with qualified manufacturers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in a pandemic. Then, all regions of the world will be able to produce their own vaccines and drugs rather than relying on promises of supplies from other countries that, predictably and understandably, will prioritize protecting their own populations. [Graphic Removed] But the United States and the European Union have been reluctant to make concrete commitments that would ensure that vaccines and therapeutics are distributed more equitably. And yet, they have pushed strongly for the treaty to include a binding provision that all countries share samples and genomic sequences of pathogens. Eswatini, on behalf of 47 African countries, has proposed a trade-off. It states that these countries would consider rules on sharing genetic data and other outbreak information provided all member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) agree on an “access and benefit sharing mechanism”. It would be a system promising access to data in return for the benefits developed on the basis of those data — such as medicines and vaccines. The logic of this proposal is compelling. Under existing international regulations, all nations must sound the alarm and share pathogen data in the event of a disease outbreak. Wealthy countries have the upper hand because they have the research and biotechnology capacity to act swiftly on the information and put it to use making lifesaving products. Countries with less capacity must wait for action by others, and then hope for goodwill. This imbalance was on display during the COVID-19 pandemic. Take what happened in the case of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. South African researchers alerted the world to the emergence of Omicron and rapidly shared its genome sequence. And yet the country was unable to obtain COVID-19 vaccines made by US and European pharmaceutical companies for much of 2021. Make access binding To lessen the reliance on goodwill, many middle-income nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America are also pushing to make more medicines and vaccines themselves and to expand their own research-and-development capacity. One way to do this is for the pandemic treaty to contain binding stipulations around sharing patents and transferring technology during emergencies. Another way is through concrete commitments from high-income countries to help fund the building of scientific expertise and infrastructure in lower-income countries, along with funding for strengthening regulatory institutions. A number of countries have also put forward the idea of attaching conditions to taxpayer-funded research to ensure that the results are openly available, that IP is licensed and that international collaborations are enhanced. [Graphic Removed] Predictably, opposition to all such options is fierce. The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, based in Geneva, Switzerland, has said it opposes any mechanism that links access to samples and genomes with the distribution of pharmaceutical products. It warns that provisions that mandate IP licensing in an emergency will hamper innovation, and stresses that agreements on drug and vaccine sharing must be voluntary.