While India has gone to the WTO requesting them to waive off the patent rights to the vaccination so that the world’s pharmacy and India can produce a generic vaccination in large quantities. This will not only reduce the cost of vaccination but also save many lives and make it more affordable to the poor nations of the world. Its strange that India had to ask for it while wealthy and developed nations like America, Australia have always fantasized about saving the world with their powers, its often seen in their movies and books that World is saved due to collective of just efforts of a single nation and at times its just America, but when we needed them, they were busy making money and amassing all the vaccination for their people. Today, America allegedly has 5 times the vaccination needed. Other wealthy nations are also on a similar path of amassing vaccinations and stocking them, not making any attempt to take back the IP rights of vaccination. It's astonishing and shocking for the world to see a wealthy nation behave like capitalists trying to milk money out of a sorry situation in pandemic times.
Why is removing IP rights important?
While India mourns its losses, the world is busy counting the money it has made by selling the vaccination to all the nations who need them, and not just the vaccinations but also its formulae or “recipe” of how to make it. If the IP Rights are taken off the vaccinations the world pharmacy, India and all the other nations can produce this vaccination in its generic form which will not only cost less but would also be affordable for all the section of society, of course the next big challenge once the IP rights are waved are the distribution and administering the vaccination in large areas, there are many a hurdle to cross but we need to take the first steps towards the solution.
It is very important to note that while the production of vaccination is itself a humongous challenge, the distribution and administration of vaccination is a bigger challenge in itself, so as soon as we get the vaccine, the easier it will be for all the nations to start vaccination of large masses promptly. If this doesn’t happen in time, the virus will keep mutating, and more lethal variants of the virus will keep reappearing. The next variant, as said but the agencies is aimed at the infants and children, which will cause a huge loss of life for the infants. It is expected that the death toll of infants will be far more than that of adults due to various reasons. To start with the medical infrastructure for kids is far worse than that of adults, there are less amount of pediatrics in the nation than any other specialist doctors then the diversity and poverty, since not all population is exposed to goo environmental conditions the immunity and nourishment level of infants is much worse in some sections of the society.
Progress till now
While India and South Africa has mooted a fresh request to wave the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), this time its backed by Joe Biden administration and thus its makes our case a bit stronger but the European Union (EU) otherwise titled as world’s Pharmacy is reluctant in granting the same. EU Council President Charles Michel said, “We don't think, in the short term, that it's the magic bullet”. Its rather an insensitive thing to say on a global platform as we all know its not going to be a magic bullet and rather will be a very long and tedious process to make and distribute the vaccine, but the first step towards it is to produce the vaccine and for that we need the vaccination’s IP to be waved off.
Is the worst yet to come?
The short answer to that question will be yes, the mutational abilities of the virus are known to all but what we haven’t considered is that the vaccination now is effective on the present strain of COVID but there is no guarantee that the vaccination will continue to have the same effect on all future strains of the covid While its pertinent to consider that the vaccine might work on the next strain but may not maintain the same level of efficiency. Not to forget its adaptability, there are high chances that the virus may devise a method to outgrow the vaccination effect as well and make it completely ineffective, and before it happens, a major population (global population) must be vaccinated rapidly.
If it ever happens that the virus may outgrow the vaccination effect and fine a way to mutate and create more stronger variant which may make the vaccination ineffective, the resulting variant would be more lethal and stable than ever with capabilities which can even wipe out a heavy chunk of population within in weeks of its existence. That would be a very pathetic state, and no nation would be able to save lives in such a case. We need to make decisions rapidly on a global level.
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