A group of international public health experts on Friday called on the Group of Seven leaders gathering in Hiroshima to resist the pharmaceutical industry’s pressure to strengthen intellectual property rights for important vaccines and drugs, saying such moves would hamper equal access to medical countermeasures in future pandemics.
Coordinated by the NGO coalition People’s Vaccine Alliance and signed by more than a dozen scientists, including Salim S. Abdool Karim, director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa, the letter urges G7 leaders to make sure that critical vaccines, treatments and tests are deployed in every country during the next public health crisis, regardless of their ability to pay.
The World Health Organization is currently negotiating a global accord that will govern how countries prepare and respond to future pandemics like COVID-19, including whether to expand waivers on intellectual property rules for products and the transfer of technology to low- and middle-income countries.