NGOs protest Commerce Ministry inaction on WTO COVID-19 vaccine proposal

They write to Prime Minister asking him to renegotiate the draft proposal to waive intellectual property rights on vaccines and highlight the need for active engagement to improve it

A group of non governmental organisations has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to prod the Union Commerce Ministry into “proactively engaging” with a draft proposal at the World Trade Organisation-TRIPS in Geneva to waive intellectual property rights, mostly controlled by companies in the West, governing COVID vaccines, drugs and diagnostics.

In October 2020, at the WTO’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council, India and South Africa proposed that the WTO do away with certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement for the duration of the pandemic to facilitate access to technologies necessary for the production of vaccines and medicines.

Such a waiver would aid scaling up the local production, critical to ensure wider access to affordable and effective vaccines. Most of these patents are held by pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and the European Union. The waiver proposal was blocked at the TRIPS Council and the WTO ministerial Council though there have been several rounds of discussions involving Ministers of several WTO member-countries.

The E.U., the U.S., India and South Africa later reportedly agreed on a new draft agreement that waives intellectual property rights on COVID vaccines for five years but not on drugs and diagnostic devices.

Critics add that the draft agreement does not touch upon ‘trade secrets,’ which specify the ingredients and chain of steps necessary to develop a vaccine. The current waiver does not automatically compel patent rights holders to share this information with a potential manufacturer for free.

In a letter to the Prime Minister dated May 28, the NGOs called on Mr. Modi to “renegotiate the text” and referenced his statement at the Global Vaccine Summit on 12 th May where he said that “...WTO rules, particularly TRIPS, need to be more flexible.”