 Hello, from Geneva and welcome to People's Dispatch. We are here at the 76th World Health Assembly, where the countries and civil society, activists and other stakeholders come together to discuss the most pertinent issues, health issues of our times. Apart from the proceedings of the assembly itself, a lot of events happen around the same time in Geneva. One of the most important events that happened last week was release of a report on new treatments of Ebola. It was released by Metzor Sofrancier in French and Doctors Without Borders in English. The report very correctly points out that there are a lot of barriers in accessing Ebola treatments by people who needed the most, which is primarily in Africa. It was in 2020 that two new medicines and treatments were approved by, it was in 2020, that two new treatments or medicines were approved by the US FDA and they should have been able to be accessed by people who have since suffered from the fatal disease. However, we have seen many outbreaks in Africa since then and these treatments have not reached those people. What are the reasons and what do we have to learn from them when we are discussing the new pandemic treaty is something what we will discuss today. We are joined by Francisco Viegas from MSF Access Campaign, which is the policy think tank of the organization. And Francisco is based in Brazil and has been following the pandemic treaty and other intellectual property related issues for a long time. Welcome to the show Francisco. So as we were discussing the report by MSF that clearly shows that despite having two new treatments, we had outbreaks in Africa and people were not able to get those treatments and Ebola is one of the most fatal diseases as we know. So and the reason also was that the company while keeping the price very high actually United States has holding the all those treatments which are available today. We saw similar things happening during COVID-19 also when the vaccines were hoarded by the western nations. So through all these things, what do you think is something that we can learn when the world is discussing pandemic treaty because Ebola itself is a pandemic and epidemic that we keep talking. I mean a disease that can lead into turn into a pandemic later. So what can we learn from that? Thank you very much for the question. I think our main points on launching this report now was to draw the lessons of the challenges of inequity and access to the Ebola treatments and particularly that you need to discuss in advance and develop in advance binding access conditions early on in the R&D process to make sure that those products that are developed in the end gets to the hands from people that actually need those treatments. And what we have seen from this example is that the opposite has happened. And nowadays the only stockpile that exists for the treatments are in the US with the biosecurity approach. And if an outbreak occurs right now for Ebola, no country in the world, even countries that have been more having diseases, outbreaks happening in the country, won't have access to those treatments. So it's an important example of how countries should take this in consideration during the negotiations of the pandemic accord and the whole PPR response, pandemic preparedness and response preparation, need to think about how they need to develop access conditions early on to the development of those tools to make sure that people get it in the end basically. Yeah. So I think access and benefit sharing is something that the WHO has been discussed for a long time also. But there has been no consensus on that so far. But do you think that if we talk about pandemic treaty, the global north or the rich countries, are they going to really accept it now when they have not accepted it over the past so many decades when there has been so much push still? All right, so next on topic is one of the main controversies that are currently having the pandemic treaty discussions in which we see countries from the north really resisting any language that benefits countries that have shared pathogens, biological materials or samples that have ultimately contributed to the development of medical tools such as treatment of vaccines. And this is one of the topics of greatest controversy and we hope that developing countries are able to hold their stance to make sure that actually benefits are derived from the contribution of patients and also the information that they share with the broader scientific community to develop those drugs. And this has happened in the past as you know in terms of the pandemic influenza response, the whole framework that was developed within WHO for preparedness was because Indonesia shared the samples for influenza vaccine development and they never got the actual vaccines that came out of this development. So it's not a theoretical consideration, it's a living practice and a living inequity that has happened in the past. And we are concerned that this will happen again and again if you don't have a strong framework that enables benefits arriving from the sharing of pathogens. Thank you. So you talk about lived experiences which we have had so far. So when we talk about pandemic treaty, what comes to mind is COVID-19 and the experiences from there. But at the same time we have seen in the past many other pandemics and epidemics have occurred, be it the HIV, AIDS crisis that the world went through or the SARS is scared that it happened. So beyond COVID and say now we have already discussed Ebola, what are the learnings that we have? Also in terms of intellectual property that should inform when we are discussing the pandemic treaty at the moment. I think it's an excellent question because the access to medicines movement, NMSF specifically also have learned hard lessons from across the years in which we have seen that voluntary approaches that are based in either voluntary licenses or sharing of intellectual property more on a voluntary basis have not been sufficient to actually address the access challenges and the need for increased treatments across the globe. Because if we consider existing disease challenges that are happening nowadays even for hepatitis C, less than 40% of the world currently has treatments for hepatitis C. The same for HIV in which less than 60% of the population broadly has access to the treatments they need in difficult settings. So it's not a challenge sadly that specific to pandemics or to outbreaks that happen in a severe case. It's a day-to-day challenge that we face in our operations but also in developing countries of the inequity of access. So we're bringing those lessons to try to prevent that this continue to happen with new diseases with new pathogens and in a larger scale when we see during a pandemic which was basically a acute problem of a chronic issue of inequity of access consideration. So that's why during the pandemic MSF particularly and the access campaign push for a trip's waiver for a waiver of intellectual property rights and for increased sharing of intellectual property, not only intellectual property but know how to enable increasing manufacturing capacity not only for vaccines but for treatments and diagnostics. And we haven't seen this doing one of the more severe crisis of access that we have lived in recently. So that's why we want to prevent this from happening again and that's why we're asking for those commitments to be binding so that we actually are able to change the status quo of inequity that we see across the board in terms of access to medicines. Right. So you are talking about voluntary and binding again and again and I think that is a very important point whether we talk about access and benefit sharing or the intellectual property rights that they should not be held, they should be less monopoly and all of that. So again if I talk about pandemic treaty we are seeing that these provisions are, I mean there is an attempt to insert the provisions where intellectual property rights should not lead to monopoly and there should not be any barriers during pandemic. But again we are seeing a lot of pushback by the global north and which are dictated by the pharmaceutical companies and other corporations. So but in that sense do you think if, I mean there is a possibility of actually not letting intellectual, I mean doing something regarding intellectual property barriers because in the trips waiver we saw that despite so much of mobilization and all the developing countries coming together it was a very watered down document that we finally got. So what kind of hopes can we have in the pandemic accord that this wouldn't happen or what is being done about it in that sense. No I think that this is one of the huge challenges for these negotiations to make sure that there is actually strong commitments that actually change the status quo and that's what we are trying to push. But those topics are always complicated because countries have vested interest. The whole negotiation is happening at closed doors is something that civil society groups broadly have asked for increased transparency of the negotiations and having a seat at the table to listen to countries what are their actual proposals because this goes beyond the World Health Organization has impacting people's lives and livelihoods across the world. That should be open to a larger scrutiny to enable a strong position to be taken in terms of the equity and access in the future. So in terms of intellectual property actually getting us from commitment will be a huge challenge. The last text from the Bureau has been leaked in different media and the first reactions that we are taking is that a lot of the language is based on mutually agreed terms and you can imagine in an outbreak response where everybody is struggling to get access to the same products at the same time with limited manufacturing capacity, limited availability to start negotiating access to it and what are the terms is not even a practical solution not to mention able to provide access more broadly and expedited manner. So it's one of our concerns that this text is being very much further down and without strong commitment. So in terms of intellectual property, in terms of access and access conditions, most of the issues regarding the conditions that member states and countries could push when they fund R&D, when they purchase in advance health products, those are being mostly stricken down from the current document. So a lot of the things that are crucial for developing countries we are seeing that are not sufficiently taking consideration in this last draft. So we hope that countries are able to push back more strongly and together with civil society groups. And for this is key for us to communicate more broadly about what's happening here, what's happening in these negotiations, to the larger community, because once we discuss this in an open conversation, most people are in favor of the things we're pushing for, for increased access and inequity because everybody's life has been touched in a way or another in this pandemic for people have lost family members and dear ones across the globe. So it's something that we need to consider this momentum and not lose this momentum of inequity that we have lived so recently. So that's one of our concerns. Right. Access and benefit sharing, doing with intellectual property barriers, and more transparency where the common people and civil society knows what is going on during IHR and INB discussions. These are the things that we need to have a more equitable pandemic accord. And we hope that the developing countries will stick to their ground and do not give up on these important topics which impact lives more in these nations who do not finally get access to medicines and medical products in wake of intellectual property and other barriers. Thank you for joining us, Francisco. Thank you. Bye.