The Nigeria Network of NGOs (NNNGO) has reiterated its call on France, Germany and the United Kingdom to fully commit to the approval of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waiver.
The network repeated the call after the United States (U.S.) made a statement of commitment towards the approval of the TRIPS waiver.
United States Trade Representative (USTR) spokesperson, Adam Hodge, in a statement on the TRIPS waiver calls, said his country will continue to engage with other actors as part of a comprehensive effort towards a consensus.
‘Since last May, USTR has worked hard to facilitate an outcome on intellectual property that can achieve consensus across the 164 members of the World Trade Organisation to help end the pandemic’, Hodge said in the statement.
‘USTR joined informal discussions led by the WTO secretariat with South Africa, India, and the European Union (EU) to try to break the deadlock’.
Reacting to Hodge’s statement, the Executive Director of NNNGO, Oluseyi Oyebisi, said it was a ‘partial win’.
NNNGO had called on the United Kingdom, United States, France and Germany to compel pharmaceutical companies to transfer the technology needed to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines to global south manufacturers through all available mechanisms.
‘It shows we are on track in terms of our demand for the waiver and also in ensuring that there is full access to the science and the methodologies behind the vaccine development itself’, he told Development Diaries.
‘We welcome this statement from the United States and, to some extent, the civil society community celebrated this win but it is a partial win until we have other countries like Germany and France also making such commitment and ensuring we have full access’.
TRIPS is a multilateral agreement that establishes minimum standards for the regulation of different forms of intellectual property rights by member states of the WTO.
If countries agree on the waiver, countries can choose not to grant or enforce patents, industrial designs, copyright, and trade secrets related to all Covid-19 medical products and technologies.
‘What the TRIPS waiver means for Africa is that all the 54 African countries can go ahead and produce the vaccines locally, we do not have to wait for the benevolence of developed economies for us to have access to the vaccine’, the NNNGO boss added.
‘It also means that citizens in the 54 African countries will get vaccinated in realtime and we will have the mass vaccinations we need to ensure that all of us are safe from the [Covid-19]’.
The rate of Covid-19 vaccination in Africa, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), remains low, with experts blaming vaccine inequality for the low level of vaccination.
The People’s Vaccine Alliance had criticised Europe for ‘betraying Africa’ by blocking the TRIPS waiver and hoarding 55 millions of doses which expired at the end of February 2022.
The African Union (AU) had also accused vaccine manufacturers of denying African countries a fair chance to buy Covid-19 vaccines and urged manufacturing countries to lift export restrictions on vaccines and their components.
WHO recently announced Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia as the first six countries that will receive the technology needed to produce mRNA Covid-19 vaccines in Africa.
Photo source: NNNGO
