Médecins Sans Frontières backs calls to make Covid vaccines patent-free

Big pharmaceutical firms are hindering efforts to tackle pandemic through monopolies and patents, activists argue

Poorer nations fear being cut off from the coming wave of Covid vaccines (Getty Images)

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has warned Western nations they will end up on the “wrong side of history” if they continue to block a campaign to waive patents on coronavirus vaccines and treatments.  

The international medical humanitarian agency has called on wealthy countries, including the UK, to sign-up to a proposal from India and South Africa that would suspend intellectual property rights for Covid drugs and vaccines as long as the pandemic lasts.  

Talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over the plan began last month and have been supported by 99 nations, but many richer countries including the UK, the United States and the EU have so far resisted the proposal.  

MSF said it was vital to relax the normal rules on patents to allow developing nations to produce cheaper, generic versions of lifesaving but patented Covid treatments and bring the pandemic to a close.  

“All Covid-19 health tools and technologies should be true global public goods, free from the barriers that patents and other intellectual property impose,” said Sidney Wong, who is leading MSF’s campaign.  

“We’re calling on all governments to urgently throw their support behind this groundbreaking proposal that puts human lives over corporate profits at this critical moment for global health.

“Governments need to ask themselves which side of history they want to be on when the books on this pandemic are written.”

Poorer nations argue they could cut be cut off from deploying the coming wave of coronavirus vaccines if the huge pharmaceutical corporations producing them are allowed to uphold their patents and sign licensing deals guaranteeing them de facto monopolies. 

A similar waiver to the WTO’s intellectual property rules was agreed in 2001 to tackle the HIV/AIDS crisis, which created more flexibility for the developing world to avoid patent rules that were blocking them from accessing medicines.  

MSF argued drug companies were once again hindering efforts to tackle Covid outside the West so they could generate more profit during the pandemic, by signing restrictive licensing deals which would prevent any generic competition.  

“This bold step by governments offers the world a chance to avoid repeating the tragedy of the HIV/AIDS epidemic 20 years ago, when monopolies on lifesaving treatments saw people in high-income countries get access to HIV medicines while millions in developing countries were left to die,” said Dr Khosi Mavuso, medical representative for MSF in South Africa. 

“Overriding monopolies on Covid-19 medical tools will allow global collaboration to scale-up manufacturing, supply and access for everyone.”