 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello everyone, welcome to the launch of People's Health Dispatch and in this very first interview of the hours we are going to talk about a very important issue, something that has become the major or had become the major bone of contention between the global north and the global south and somewhere there is a progress with regard to what global south has been pushing for in the context of COVID-19 but we still have some way along the way to go. So today we are joined by Sangita Shashikan who is the development and IP coordinator for Third World Network and we are going to discuss about TRIPS waiver at the World Trade Organization. As we all know the trade related aspects of intellectual property that is something which has which governs global trade of many things including pharmaceutical products. It was in October that India and South Africa had put a proposal at the World Trade Organization saying that all intellectual property be it copyrights or trade secrets or patents that should be waived off for medicines, vaccines and other products which are required for COVID-19 its containment, treatment and management and prevention. However we see that it has been eight months to that proposal and it is only finally now that some of the developed countries have agreed to a text-based negotiation though from the very beginning more than 100 countries from the developing world had been supporting this TRIPS waiver proposal. In the latest development what we are seeing that a new proposal which is a text on which the negotiations can happen that has been placed at the WTO by 62 countries and the negotiations will start hopefully soon on that. We are discussing all of that today. So Sangita that would be my first question to you. So we are seeing that the new proposal has tried to address some of the contentions which existed earlier and that's where the developed countries were not really becoming a part of the proposal. What are those changes and how do you look at them? Yeah so the TRIPS waiver proposal is a revised proposal that the proponents have made. They have made the scope of the health products a bit more specific. It has also proposed a duration to the TRIPS waiver proposal. So what we are seeing is that countries like US I mean that became a big moment in a sense when US Joe Biden's administration announced that they will be supporting the waiver but just for the vaccines. Do you think that is enough and negotiations are possible in that context? So if you look at what is required to control the pandemic it's really a range of different products and technologies. It's not limited to vaccines. You will need masks, you'll need personal protective equipment, ventilators, diagnostics, equipment for diagnostics, the test reagents, medicines, syringes and so many more equipment. And what we have witnessed in this global pandemic since it's begun is there have been severe shortages of these different products and these are very crucial products that are needed to restrain the pandemic. So what is essential is really scaling up of manufacturing to meet this demand and the production of these products involves and requires various materials components as well as equipment. So the proposed scope of the waiver has to not only cover the products and technologies that are needed to control the pandemic but also the different tools needed for the manufacture of the products and technologies. So if you look at say for instance mRNA vaccines that are different webs of intellectual property claims involving the underlying technology such as the lipid nanoparticle which will be required for the development of mRNA vaccines. And the COVID-19 strategies of countries, the response strategies of countries, the US, the EU and even the WHO recognizes that the intervention is not limited to vaccines, it's what is required is really beyond vaccination. For instance the vaccines will not overnight eliminate the disease, therapeutics will be needed for various COVID patients. You also need diagnostics, you know these are basically the eyes and ears of the global response to assess the scale of what of the pandemic of the pandemic but also to identify the variants. So in this context, you know a scope limited to vaccines is not sufficient and I think the revised scope of the revised text is justified. Right, so the countries who were and other organizations who were opposing the waiver, they had one other critique which was that the waiver had to be temporary. So the new text takes care of it by saying giving us a time frame of at least three years. Do you think that is enough to have like a three-year time frame for the waiver? So the waiver is granted under Article 9 of the World Trade Organization Agreement and this is for the duration of situations of exceptional circumstance. So this COVID-19 pandemic would definitely meet the situation of exceptional circumstances and the revised text stresses that the international community is actually dealing with a novel pathogens and there are many uncertainties, there are therapeutic investigation underway for different therapeutics and then there are many unknowns with respect to vaccines that which will have an impact on the demand and supply of the vaccine such as the duration of the immunity that is conferred, the effectiveness of the vaccines against new variants, the effect on children. So all of these factors have an impact on the demand as well as the supply of the vaccines and the revised text also in its introduction highlights that the duration has to be practical for manufacturing to be feasible and viable and it is on that basis it calls for a practical and flexible duration by proposing that the general council of WTO assesses the existence of exceptional circumstances justifying the waiver after a minimum period of three years to determine the date of termination. So the proponents have provided a very clear and concrete justification for the proposed duration. I would even argue that actually the duration is quite conservative given the unpredictable situation that we are actually in with respect to COVID-19 because we are essentially dealing with a new pathogen and there is very little information that's very little that we know about this pathogen. So as we are talking about time, so now the finally when we are expecting text-based negotiations to start, it has taken eight months for us to reach here and how long would you think the further the negotiations would take to have a final resolution in hand because after that also there's a long process to go in terms of technology transfer and all of that. So what would you say how long will that be? What should we expect in terms of time frame going forward from here? Yeah, I think the WTO delegation should actually prioritise the negotiation of this new tax and they should really aim to finalise it as soon as possible. These negotiations have to be expedited. We cannot wait many months for these negotiations to continue because what we need is really urgent. The longer we take, there will be much delay in the supply of the tools needed to control this pandemic. Right, that's so important. There was one other argument against the initial proposal which was that the trip's waiver, if that is put in place, it would endanger the incentive for research. The new text has tried to address it by saying that we need to preserve incentives for research and development and innovation and that these should be balanced with the public health interest. So in fact, this new proposal responds to most of that criticism. Would you agree with that that it is trying to do that somewhere? Well, much of the COVID R&D is publicly funded. I think this is a fact and companies supplying COVID products are making enormous profit. So this is another fact. What we have seen in the case of vaccines and therapeutics, the research shows that the public sector has actually invested almost 93 billion euros for the R&D, all these different investments for COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics in 2020. If you look at AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines, R&D is almost 100% publicly funded and based on the company's stated production of vaccines, the pharmaceutical industry is expected to make billions in revenue in 2021. For instance, Pfizer may make up to 43 billion, AstraZeneca 16 billion, Moderna 32 billion. Even on a conservative side, these companies are expected to make billions of dollars. In the area of diagnostic, Cepheid, for instance, has surpassed 2 billion in annual revenue in 2020. This is 100% growth over previous years, largely through the COVID-19 expert test. Now, meanwhile, COVID-19 incidental global crisis where countries are really moving from one national lockdown to another national lockdown, massive social and economic impact cost as lives, livelihoods all around the world are affected and more so in developing countries. And especially in most vulnerable populations, it is estimated that actually in 2021, we will have additional 150 million people being pushed into extreme. So, given the current situation that we are in, the social and economic cost of it, it is really time for us to really lift the monopolies because these monopolies are actually artificially constraining global supply. So, we need to lift these monopolies so that we can actually limit the damage of the current crisis. The lack of inaction, it may be to the bring many, many more billions to the few companies, but it comes at a huge cost to the rest of the world. And especially the most vulnerable populations, the developing countries, the least developed countries. That's right. And actually, I think one place from where we can draw an example is the polio vaccine. Today, the world is close to eradicating polio and poliomyelitis and the polio vaccine was never patented. So, I think that example should be used to say that why for COVID, which has wrecked havoc all across the world, and especially as you are saying, in developing countries and vulnerable populations, that gives us a very strong reason to not go for business as usual practices and the same arguments that have been given always. So, lastly, one question, but I guess a very important question, which is what role has the civil society and health activists have played in your opinion? Because they have been quite active throughout these eight months and have been actually calling for including your organization very actively across the world that there should not be any intellectual property and that will begin much before COVID in the one sense. So, how would you see that contribution? Civil society, health activists, trade unions, many people have contributed and have shown a lot of support for the proposed waiver because they realize the need to lift intellectual property monopolies. They realize the need to ensure that there is no barriers to manufacturing and production and the need to scale up and diversify supply. And they have played a crucial role in also creating awareness, generating support for the waiver and mainstreaming the issue. And this is actually a key factor that led to the U.S. expressing its support for an IP waiver for vaccines and initiation of tax-based negotiations. Clearly, the waiver has to go beyond vaccines, but the U.S. has at least as a start expressed support for an IP waiver for vaccines. And following the U.S. support, other developed countries such as New Zealand have also expressed their support. So, at this point, civil society should especially focus on creating awareness among governments that continue to be opposed to the proposal such as the European Union. They have to highlight the relevance and importance of the proposal and that countries that are opposing this proposal are actually hindering creating barriers to the world achieving equitable access for we see today. And even from the since the start of the beginning, there's been huge disparity in access between the higher income countries and the developing countries and these developed countries. So, we need much more campaigning on the ground on these issues, creating awareness of the importance of the TRIPS waiver proposal, the importance of maintaining the scope and a practical and flexible duration as proposed in the revised text. I think that's all for now. And just to inform everyone who's watching this that the informal TRIPS Council meeting will happen tomorrow that is Monday 31st May. And we will know about the positions of the countries better and then there will be a significant progress on the text at the formal TRIPS Council meeting which is to happen on 8th and 9th June. I'm sure Sangeeta will be following that and any last words Sangeeta before we cross this interview. We hope that the meeting tomorrow on 31st May will actually lead to text-based negotiations and we really call civil society to push the governments in this direction and to reach an early conclusion to this matter so that we can all move into action to do what is needful to actually scale up production and diversify supply. Thanks. Thank you, Sangeeta. Thanks for being with us for this for our launch video for People's Health Dispatch. And of course, we'll be coming back to you as these negotiations will get into more details and then we need to analyze these important issues in much more depth. So thank you so much and look forward to meeting with you.