JOHANNESBURG (The Southern African Times) – As debate over a proposal to temporarily waive intellectual property protections for COVID vaccines and treatments continues to stall at the World Trade Organization (WTO), members that remain opposed — including the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the European Union — are increasingly being accused of violating human rights on an international scale.
Calls for the WTO to approve the so-called TRIPS waiver for vaccine patents and manufacturing technology is reaching a fever pitch with the emergence of the Omicron variant that was first identified in South Africa.
Omicron has prompted travel bans across the world and inflamed tensions over massive global disparities in vaccine access, which experts and advocates have warned for months would allow the virus to mutate and spread outward from lower-income countries where vaccines remain out of reach for most people.
Yet Moderna has refused to share the “recipe” for its COVID mRNA vaccine with a South African biotech firm and a World Health Organization (WHO) effort in Africa to transfer the technology necessary for making vaccines to African nations, where less than 1 in 10 people have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
In the United States and Europe, monopolies on the crucial technology and know-how needed to make vaccines largely remains controlled by private pharmaceutical companies that received billions of dollars from wealthy governments to develop vaccines — and are now pulling in billions in global profit.
