The crisis in India shows exactly why we need the TRIPs waiver
India has been hitting the headlines for weeks now - and for all the wrong reasons. The health crisis that’s unravelling in the country is horrifying and incredibly hard to watch. Funeral pyres burning day and night and bodies washing up on the shores of the Ganges are almost unbearable scenes to witness.
Clearly there have been multiple failings in India’s COVID-19 strategy for the country to reach this grim point. Having declared “victory” over the pandemic only months ago, President Modi is now being accused of turning a blind eye to the warning signs that a second wave was about to hit the country. No doubt he is going to have serious questions to answer for some time to come.
“there just aren’t enough vaccines to go round, and too many countries are reliant on too few manufacturers.”
But besides the serious political questions the situation now raises, the crisis in India is making one thing abundantly clear. We absolutely cannot allow there to be such an incredible over-reliance for COVID-19 vaccines on just one country, and primarily on one supplier.
The Serum Institute in India is the largest vaccine manufacturing facility in the world. It is not only supposed to be providing doses for India, it is the main supplier to most developing countries around the world - via an initiative called COVAX.
COVAX is supposed to be getting up to 1.3 billion doses from India. Yet because of the domestic crisis, no supplies have been sent from India since March.
“unless we deal with the issue of vaccine supply right now, we’re going to see this crisis playing out again and again”
The crux of the problem is that globally, there just aren't enough vaccines to go round, and too many countries are reliant on too few manufacturers. The reason for this is that pharmaceutical companies hold monopolies on these vaccines - meaning that the control over who makes these vaccines, and where, is in private hands.
Despite the unprecedented levels of public funding that have gone into developing these vaccines, pharma companies are using their monopoly powers to artificially control supply - keeping prices high (even despite price pledges to the contrary). Governments could break these monopolies if they wanted to - the UK is one of those standing in the way of this happening.
No country should be hoarding vaccines, but if there were enough to go around then maybe countries like the UK wouldn’t be buying up so many that they could immunise their whole population more than three times over.
What we need is a substantial increase in availability and supply - and to do this we must break the monopolies that currently stand in the way. That’s why India and South Africa have proposed that the World Trade Organisation temporarily waive intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and diagnostics (the TRIPS waiver).
Having been one of the key blockers, the US has just supported a form of the TRIPs waiver - and although this is an incredible breakthrough, their proposal would only cover vaccines. We need a full waiver on intellectual property of all the health technologies that are vitally needed to end this pandemic.
India is in the grips of the worst health crisis that it has possibly ever seen. But unless we deal with the issue of vaccine supply right now, we’re going to see this crisis playing out again and again all over the world. That means more death, more misery, and more variants which will only prolong all our suffering. That’s why we need a TRIPs waiver - and why we need the UK to stop blocking and start supporting.