Health industry has laid the blame on manufacturing hurdles over a slow vaccine rollout rather than intellectual property protections placed by the companies.
Proponents of doing away with IP rights say more companies in more countries could produce the vaccines, providing broader access in poorer nations that so far have seen few doses.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, whose country is co-leading a push at the World Trade Organisation to exempt COVID-19 vaccines from IP rights, insisted on Friday the jabs were “a public good and must be recognised as such”.
“We call on the pharmaceutical industry to directly transfer this technology free of intellectual property barriers to low and middle-income countries,” he told an event hosted by the World Health Organization.
“Let us together challenge vaccine nationalism and show that protecting intellectual property rights does not come at the expense of human lives.”
