No progress was made on Tuesday at the World Trade Organization on the idea of a temporary lifting of patents on anti-Covid vaccines to increase their production, we learned from the WTO.
Read also: Covid-19: the turnaround of the United States paves the way for the lifting of patents on vaccines
Member states met at the organization's headquarters in Geneva, without reaching a consensus, WTO spokesperson Keith Rockwell told reporters.
"This is a subject that arouses a lot of emotions and there is no question of stopping discussing it,"
he added. A new informal meeting will take place in early September, before an official meeting on October 13 and 14.
Since October, the WTO has faced calls from India and South Africa for the temporary removal of intellectual property protections, in order they say to boost production in developing countries and remedy glaring inequalities in access to vaccines.
This idea has long met with fierce opposition from the pharmaceutical giants, in the name of their financial effort in research, and from their host countries, for which patents do not represent the major obstacle to the increase in production. vaccines, and who fear that such a measure will end up harming the capacity for innovation.
Increase production
Agreements within the WTO must be supported by consensus of all 164 member states.
Keith Rockwell stressed that all member states have insisted on the need to increase vaccine production as soon as possible, but that they do not agree on the best way to achieve this.
India and South Africa can count on the support of several dozen countries, including the United States and China.
European countries, Japan and South Korea, on the other hand, are hostile to the temporary lifting of patents.
0.3% of vaccines in the 29 poorest countries
More than 3.93 billion doses of anti-Covid vaccines have already been injected around the world, according to an AFP count. But only 0.3% of that total was administered in the 29 poorest countries in the world, yet home to 9% of the world's population.
“Increasing production in developing countries so that more doses of vaccines are injected in Africa, Latin America and Asia is of critical importance”
for all WTO members, the spokesperson stressed. word of the organization.
