E-DRUG: We Need to Make Vaccines Global Public Goods—Before New Pandemics Strike
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Dear E-drug readers,
I just published a brief commentary in Barron's on the upcoming WTO ministerial (now cancelled) and the Special Session of the WHA. You can access it here:
https://www.barrons.com/articles/omicron-vaccines-public-goods-inequities-trips-waiver-51638120238
There is no paywall. Just click on the X in the corner of the add when it shows up.
This is a time of missed opportunities. Trade ministers were scheduled to meet this week at the 12th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. The meeting was postponed due to the alarming emergence of the Omicron variant. The delay and the lack of action so far shows just how badly the world needs creativity and flexibility in our responses to the current global inequity in access to pandemic countermeasures. It has created fertile conditions for new variants.
A little up the road from the WTO, health ministers will meet virtually this week at the World Health Organization for a special session of the World Health Assembly. Both fora were intending to discuss pandemic inequity, and both fora will attempt to come up with solutions for the refusal by many pharmaceutical companies to share intellectual property and manufacturing know-how.
I will also publish this later today on our own website so if you want to reproduce it in your own newsletter you can do it from there or send me an email.
Kind regards,
Ellen
Ellen 't Hoen LLM, PhD | Medicines Law & Policy
www.medicineslawandpolicy.org
ellenthoen@medicineslawandpolicy.net