While a patent waiver may be good news in the long-term, it may not translate into any meaningful gains for India, professor of public policy and management group, IIM Calcutta writes, adding vaccine equity may be an elusive dream
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On October 2, 2020, India and South Africa made a proposal that members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) should “work together to ensure that intellectual property rights such as patents, industrial designs, copyright and protection of undisclosed information do not create barriers to the timely access to affordable medical products including vaccines and medicines or to scaling-up of research, development, manufacturing and supply of medical products essential to combat Covid-19”. The proposal was to waive certain obligations of the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement until widespread vaccination was in place globally, and the majority of the world’s population had developed immunity. On May 5, 2021, the US government in a historic step announced that it was in favour of waiving Intellectual Property (IP) protection for Covid-19 vaccines, a measure intended to boost vaccine supplies which will help people around the world to get their jabs.
[This article has been published with permission from IIM Calcutta. www.iimcal.ac.in Views expressed are personal.]