Brazil Target of Protests in India for Opposing Vaccine Patent Waiver

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Over 200 organizations and individuals representing patients, doctors, scientists and social groups from India and South Africa are protesting against Brazil, due to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ positioning in the debate on the future of vaccines against Covid-19. Criticism was also directed at the U.S., European and Japanese governments.

Brazil, along with these wealthy countries, is blocking a proposal by emerging economies to suspend vaccine patents and allow the immunizer to be produced in a generic version. Without the patent, vaccines could be produced by laboratories in other parts of the world, thereby expediting access to millions of people and at lower prices.

As of Tuesday, the anti-patent campaign will pressure Brazil and other governments to change their diplomatic stance on the pandemic. Letters will be delivered to the Brazilian ambassadors in Pretoria and New Delhi, alerting that the Brazilian government’s stance is “unsustainable and self-destructive”.

Since last year, the governments of South Africa and India have been co-sponsoring a proposal to suspend vaccine patents until the end of the pandemic. But President Bolsonaro’s government has been attacking the suggestion for the past few months.

On Thursday, a closed meeting at the WTO (World Trade Organization) in Geneva (Switzerland) will again discuss the issue. Countries like South Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Mongolia, Chad, Indonesia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Venezuela endorse the proposal, as well as dozens of other emerging countries. The World Health Organization also favors the Indian proposal to breach patents.

The project to democratize vaccines is strongly rejected by wealthy countries, which own these patents. Brazil has been the only developing country to openly declare its opposition to the proposal from the very beginning, after years of international leadership in ensuring access to medicines to the poorest countries.

In its search for vaccines from India, Brazil’s Foreign Ministry toned down criticism.

Faced with challenges to secure vaccines produced in India, Brazil adopted a tactical retreat in January. At the WTO meeting to discuss the issue, Brazil’s Foreign Ministry abandoned its criticism and chose to remain silent. However, Brasília did not stand up for the project either.

Over the last few months in 2020, the Foreign Ministry was accused by foreign activists of flooding the WTO debate with questions to India, as a deterrent to negotiations and to undermine the proposal.

The campaign launched on Tuesday places Brazil in a radically different position than it was at the start of the century. Twenty years ago, it was Brazil’s international action that led the WTO to establish rules to allow greater access to medicines. At that time, the fight was against AIDS. This leadership became one of the most important foreign policy assets of ex-presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, applauded by the same institutions that are now launching a campaign against the Foreign Ministry.

Monopolies cost lives

The protest has the participation of Doctors Without Borders, but also includes organizations such as The Delhi Network of Positive People, Indian Drug Users’ Forum (IDUF), International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC)-South Asia, Empower India, Focus on the Global South and Global Alliance for Human Rights, as well as dozens of South African groups representing patients, doctors and researchers.

One of the campaign’s initiatives is the delivery of a letter to countries opposed to the proposal, including Norway, U.S.A., Japan and Brazil. “The proposal to renounce patents comes at a critical moment of the pandemic, aiming to tackle these challenges,” argued the organizations in the document submitted on Tuesday.

According to the organizations, the suspension of patents would allow governments to take measures to “prevent monopolies that delay domestic manufacturing, access and cost lives.”

“To date, over 100 countries welcome or support the proposal in some way. Some 400 civil society organizations worldwide and international bodies such as the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, UNITAID and the African Commission on Human Rights have urged governments to endorse the proposed waiver with urgency,” they note.

“However, rather than showing global solidarity in the fight against the pandemic by supporting the proposed waiver, a small group of WTO members have so far chosen not to endorse the initiative,” they said.

“It is now clear that the longer the virus remains in circulation among unprotected populations, the more likely it is that mutations will occur. These mutations could impact all countries – including those opposed to the proposed waiver – and prolong the pandemic. Faced with such a crisis, Brazil’s opposition is unsustainable and self-destructive,” they claim.

AIDS as an example

The organizations believe that Brazil needs to take into consideration what happened in the fight against AIDS. According to them, by the end of the last century, intellectual property monopolies on HIV treatment delayed access to antiretroviral therapy by patients in Africa, Asia and Latin America by ten years. “This led to millions of unnecessary deaths between the late 90’s and mid-2000’s, when patent barriers were addressed and generic drugs against HIV became available,” they point out.

“In this pandemic, we have once again witnessed how structural inequality in global health has resulted in an ongoing struggle to ensure access to medicines, vaccines, and other related tools needed in developing countries,” they said.

“The proposed WTO waiver offers an opportunity to avert a tragic repeat of the unequal access to life-saving healthcare technologies experienced in the past,” they said.

In the document, the organizations call on Brazil to “stop blocking the adoption of the proposed WTO waiver and rather express support for this important proposal during formal negotiations.”

According to wealthy countries, patent waiver will not solve the issue. Despite the pressure, Europe, the United States and Japan insist that patent breaches would not solve the raw material supply issue.

They also stress that the current system provides sufficient tools to solve any problems related to intellectual property and that the implementation of the proposed waiver would undermine current efforts to fight the pandemic. One of the impacts would be to push away private sector investments.

These countries noted that while there is public funding for research and development, vaccine production and distribution continues to be an investment risk for the private sector.

At the WTO last month, an Indian government official was explicit in noting that the “worst of nightmares” has been confirmed, given the inability to reach an agreement: there aren’t enough vaccines for everyone. New Delhi alerted that it is precisely the lack of production of generic versions of the vaccine against Covid-19 that is preventing the global supply of an immunizer.

India cautions that “a large number of manufacturing facilities in many countries with proven capacity to produce safe and effective vaccines are unable to use such capacities because of new intellectual property obstacles.”

According to India, this is evidence that the current patent system is not adequate to meet the huge global demand for vaccines and treatments.

India argues that what developed countries have said about the adequacy of such licensing agreements to increase manufacturing capacities has proven to be insufficient. Voluntary licenses, even where they exist, are shrouded in secrecy, terms and conditions are not transparent, and their scope is limited to specific quantities, or to a limited subset of countries, thereby encouraging nationalism.

Source: UOL News