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.”
‘Chillingly silent’
The actions of the Commerce Ministry regarding the TRIPS Waiver proposal since the second half of 2021 “were opaque and chillingly silent” the letter alleged.
T.N. Prathapan, Congress Member of Parliament, too wrote a person letter to Mr. Modi on May 24, echoing similar sentiments and said there was a “noticeable slowing down of India’s proactive role since the change of bureaucratic head at the Commerce Ministry.”
“The Quad engagement has proven to be a failure and the text-based negotiations provide an opportunity to rectify the mistakes. We believe that the engagement of the Quad process cannot be cited as a reason for abdicating the responsibility of active engagement in the negotiation,” the letter noted.
The Quad refers to a grouping of India, United States, Japan and Australia on maritime security and economic cooperation. Among other things, it had committed to producing a billion doses of vaccine, under a Quad Vaccine Initiative. This project though, as The Hindu has earlier reported, is floundering.
The letter adds that the current version of the text needed to include therapeutics and diagnostics and also remove certain additional conditions, called ‘Trips plus’ conditions that had made their way into the draft.
Signatories to this letter include Pratibha Sivasubramanian of Campaign for Access to Medicines, Diagnostics and Devices-India, Forum for Medical Ethics Society, Mumbai, Drug Action Forum and All India Drug Action Network.
