SA must support the intellectual property pool

President Cyril Ramaphosa last month joined 139 other heads of state, former heads of state and other prominent public figures in signing a letter announcing support for ‘The People’s Vaccine’, a global guarantee which ensures that – when a safe and effective vaccine is developed – it is produced rapidly at scale and made available for all people, in all countries, free of charge. Professor Yousuf Vawda and Professor Brook Baker, honorary research fellows at the School of Law, UKZN, add that in a related ‘landmark’ occurrence, a solidarity call to action – creating a global voluntary intellectual property pool for Covid-19-related information and technologies – would be launched. ‘This represents a major boost to the Covid-19 response, ‘by creating a technology-sharing platform which removes access barriers to effective vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and devices.’ Writing on the City Press site, Vawda and Baker say the envisaged technology pool will be voluntary and based on social solidarity. ‘It will act as a repository of all scientific knowledge, intellectual property, test data, trade secret and industry know-how, to be shared on an equitable basis by the global community. It will promote quicker, more efficient and better open-science research and product development. It will mobilise and expand additional manufacturing capacity, and it will help ensure speedier and more equitable access to existing and newly-discovered Covid-19 health products.’

‘The People’s Vaccine’ will rely in part on the Unitaid-sponsored Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), which negotiates with patent holders for open, non-exclusive licences on life-saving medicines for low- and middle-income countries. Vawda and Baker say previously, the MPP prioritised treatments for HIV, hepatitis C and TB by facilitating licences to generic manufacturers to increase production and distribution of the medicines to enable affordable access. The authors note that SA is a major beneficiary of the MPP, and the massive roll-out of its antiretroviral drugs programme would ‘not have otherwise been possible’. Under its new expanded mandate, the MPP would pursue equitable licensing of Covid-19 medical products to benefit the entire globe. The authors thus call on Ramaphosa to ‘promptly’ declare SA’s support for the solidarity call to action on the Covid-19 technology pool. ‘At the same time, we remind Ramaphosa that there is work to be done at home amending SA’s Patents Act, and instituting emergency measures to temporarily suspend patenting of Covid-19 medical products and to provide for automatic or mandatory compulsory licences on such products should voluntary measures prove unsuccessful.’