The government is putting pharma profits over lives

By Alka in Leicester

Ahead of an important meeting at the World Trade Organisation last week, over ten thousand of us called on the UK government to stop blocking efforts by over 100 countries to break COVID monopolies. 

My father passed away from COVID this year in India. His death could have been avoidable if vaccines and treatments were available to everyone. Instead, rich countries like the UK have hoarded vaccine supplies, and now they’re standing in the way of efforts to make sure countries in the Global South can get equal access.

That’s why I’ve been taking action. Recently, I joined over 200 Indian diaspora in the UK, and individuals in India, to call on the government to urgently support the TRIPs waiver proposal. In their reply, the Department of Trade wrote the following:

We are aware of other WTO members’ developing views on a proposed waiver of some provisions of the TRIPS Agreement to tackle Covid-19 and we will continue to engage constructively with them. However, any negotiations in the WTO on a possible waiver will need unanimous support, which could take a long time. 

“My father passed away from COVID this year in India. His death could have been avoidable”

But the UK isn’t engaging constructively with the waiver, as they claim - in reality they are blocking it - and they even tried to cover this up by announcing vaccine donations that won’t come anywhere close to fixing the problem. This failure to admit that their own role in preventing it from progressing is completely bewildering to me. The government continues to fall back on its financial contributions to COVAX - the initiative that aims to deliver vaccines to the Global South - and its involvement in the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. But the truth of the matter is that neither of these are leading to the scale up in COVID vaccines and treatments that we need to end this pandemic. 

If approved, the TRIPs waiver would allow drugmakers around the world to make COVID vaccines and treatments. Instead, a small group of pharma companies still holds the power to decide who gets to make the vaccines. We must break these monopolies, which are standing in the way of global, equitable access. 

“This complete failure to acknowledge that their own lack of support for the waiver is what is preventing it from progressing is completely bewildering to me.”

I am deeply disappointed that the UK has continued to block the TRIPs waiver proposal at the WTO last week. This decision by the UK government to once again put pharma company profits over global public health will continue to restrict vaccine supply, meaning that many more people around the world will have to wait a long time to get vaccinated and more families will lose their loved ones. My sisters and their families in India have still not been fully vaccinated because of the shortage.

But this is far from the end. There will be more meetings about the TRIPs waiver proposal in the Autumn and we’ll be planning how to build the pressure on the government and big pharma in the meantime. Sign up to our mailing list here to keep up to date. 

I believe through collective action we can win. If we all work together we can stop this pandemic. No-one is safe from this virus until everyone is safe - and this means getting people all around the world vaccinated as soon as possible. The TRIPs waiver would be the first step to achieving this.