 Hi everyone and welcome to another issue of the People's Health Dispatch. Today we are here to discuss something that happened at the beginning of March when an alleged text of a compromise of the trip's waiver was leaked to the media. And this text was presented as the result of the consultation among a small group of members of the WTO of the World Trade Organization, namely those where the EU, the US, India and South Africa. But although the document was leaked to the media, it remains unclear how many of these four actually agree with the document and whether it's only the EU that stands behind this version of the waiver. And notably both India and South Africa have remained quite silent on it, so this is important because we know that India and South Africa have been among the main drivers of a trip's waiver at the WTO from October 2020. And so also important to note that since this compromise document was leaked, so both social justice and rights to health movements have raised their voice against it. They have criticized it heavily because they say that it's not nearly enough to ensure the equitable access to COVID-19 products that we need and that we especially need to see in the global south in order to mitigate somehow the negative effects that the pandemic is having there. Instead, the people's movements are insisting on a return to the original trip's waiver proposal which was tabled by India and South Africa a year and a half ago and which today is supported overwhelmingly by most WTO member states at the organization. And so for this issue, we are joined here by Gopakumar from the Third World Network and we're going to discuss in what context this leaked document appeared and what are the chances that it goes through and of course what we can expect if it does. So Gopah, thank you so much for joining us today and welcome to the People's Health Dispatch. Could you tell us a bit more about the political context in which this leaked document appeared? So what do we know about the group that worked on it? What do we know of the pressures that shaped the document to look like this and so on? As you told, it was an unprecedented mobilization around this proposal to have a temporary suspension of the obligation to facilitate availability and accessibility of various COVID-19 health products which is required to effectively respond to the pandemic. However, there was no much forward movement on this issue nearly one and a half years of deliberations or discussions happened within the trip's council. However, it became very clear that towards November, without a solution to this issue or without addressing the trip's waiver request, there would not be much headway on other issues which are currently under negotiations in WTO. And it has also become a moral issue on another time of a pandemic which is happening once in 100 years. WTO as an organization has to respond to this pandemic to effectively enable countries to respond to the pandemic. However, there are a few countries which have heavy commercial interest in the pharmaceutical sector are blocking the progress towards the arriving at a consensus. So EU is in the forefront of among those groups which are vehemently opposed to the waiver proposal. So in December, when Omicron appeared and then the WTO minister had to be postponed, then the WTO secretaryate took an initiative to bring India, South Africa, EU and the US together to find a solution to the trip's waiver request. I think what I heard is that though there was some informal consultations or informal meetings were going on, but from December onwards it became very intense and hectic. I think these meetings happened in a very confidential way. There were many rounds of meetings among these four countries and now we know that these discussions or these negotiations led to some compromise, but we do not know that compromise is agreed by all all those parties who engaged in that process, but we definitely know that EU has circulated a document among its member states which contains a decision that this draft decision text and that draft decision text is leaked now it's in the public domain, but at the same time the USTR issued a statement that of course there was a process and that process led to a compromise, but that statement clearly said that there is no agreement reached on the content of the text. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for the good contextualization and now I just wanted to ask a bit more about something that you mentioned. So basically you said that you know this league document really reflects the EU position that we have seen in the past months and it has also been criticized by the access to medicine movement by broader social justice movement and all these movements have said that it's not actually a waiver, so if this document is accepted by the WTO, can you explain a bit what's going to happen? So what part of intellectual property rights might be lifted which might not and why is this important? It is important to understand the rational behind the waiver proposal. The waiver proposal emanating from a shared understanding that the existing flexibilities in the troops agreement are not enough to address the COVID-19 situation primarily because of you need a range of products. That way at a global level there is a huge demand for that product so there is a shortage of supply of all these products so you need to scale up. It is not only the availability alone, it should be available at an affordable price then only you can effectively respond to the pandemic. From that understanding it shows that IP is the main important barrier and many of these medical products are protected with multiple forms of IP, say for example vaccine. Of course everybody knows that it is protected with the patents but many people are not aware that it is also equally protected with the trade secret protection. So therefore the existing flexibilities when we articulate in the context of public health the IP flexibility is what comes to in our mind is the patent not like trade secret or industrial design etc. So it is important we need to overcome any type of IP barriers which is on the way for the scale up of production. So from that understanding the troops waiver proposal was submitted and it's also important that the even the existing flexibilities like the compulsory licensing is not enough to address primarily because there were political pressures against the use of compulsory licenses and many times the compulsory license can be issued only when there is a patent is in place but many times what we have seen this in new products are concerned then there is no patent per se but there is a pending patent application. So many times countries are not in a position to use the compulsory licenses. The idea of a waiver is basically to suspend the intellectual property for a short period of time related to COVID health products. So there would be a freedom of operation without administrative or legal procedure requirements. The concerned companies or firms or when individual can produce these products or when government can produce these products. So this is the idea of behind waiver but what we are offered now as per the leak text is a compulsory licensing mechanism which is come up with a lot of conditions and some of these conditions are trips plus in the sense that that goes beyond the current obligations of countries under the trips agreement. The leak text proposes or make it mandatory for countries to list all the patents you know while issuing compulsory license. So many developing countries it is almost impossible to find out and it may take it may these conditions may delay the entire process. There is another trips plus mechanism or trips plus conditionalities attached in the leak text is that countries are prevented from re-export under article six of the trips agreement. Every country has the freedom to determine whether they allow parallel importation or not. Parallel importation means a patent product comes at it you know from one country to send it to another country or a place where the price is you know selling at a higher price so you can always send your cheaper product to another place without the permission of the patent holder provided that destination or the export destination should not there should not have been a patent that's all but now there is a condition preventing re-exportation. There is nothing in the trips agreement prevents re-exportation so this is a very very problematic situation what we what we wish to achieve is that much more flexibility what we are offered now is the limited flexibility is with more on-arrest conditions so that is unacceptable. Yes and I think that one of the issues that has been raised also publicly for the past weeks is that the current document the one that was published by the EU is very vaccine oriented and that is definitely going to be like an issue for places in the global south which have been left behind by the west by the global north during vaccine procurement so people have not been vaccinated in the global south their access to the vaccines remains extremely limited and increasingly of course they will need the treatments that are made available now they will need the diagnostics that that are available but this document doesn't seem to take that into consideration so it's a vaccine thing with some space for expanding it to treatment and to diagnostics at a later point but of course we cannot know if that's going to be if that's going to be considered after all or not so actually my next question was going to be about this a bit more so could you maybe reflect on how this EU document would reflect on low and middle income countries. I think it's important to note the limitation of the covid-19 vaccines currently available in market all these vaccines has a limitation which does not prevent the infection it's only reduces the severeness of the disease that means the vaccinated people all are not free from the infection so that basically underlines the importance of the availability and accessibility for the therapeutics and diagnostics. Now people even after vaccination and there are geographical locations of countries especially low and middle income countries which are lacking behind the vaccination rate primarily due to the lack of availability of vaccines there the risk of infection severe infections are more so you need treatment and there are therapeutics are coming into the market including the Pfizer's product which is very promising which can reduces the burden on health system you can be treated at home unlike the remdesphere which you require a hospitalization so this therefore the access to therapeutics is very critical in the context of developing countries and therapeutics which can be produced these medicines are small molecule which can be produced by many more developing countries I mean low and middle income countries too compared to the vaccine vaccine manufacturing capacities are concentrated in a very few countries but the ability to produce therapeutics there are many more countries therefore to access the freedom of operation to produce therapeutics and diagnostics are very important and it's also critical from a public perspective to address the COVID-19 challenges right but this leak text shows that it is limited to only vaccine but the last paragraph of the text shows that the same decision will be applicable in the case of therapeutics and diagnostics but the member state has to take a decision within the next six months so that basically means there may not be any decision to wave or whatever the not a waiver but this solution applicable to therapeutics and diagnostics but there is another underlying implication is that the same text will be applicable for therapeutics and diagnostics that would be disastrous because for one of the criteria to become an eligible country is 10 percent of the you know export criteria which is mentioned in the footnot so that means many countries who has the capability to produce generics and export to least developed countries or when many other low and middle income countries will be excluded from using the benefit of this decision and of course what I'm saying that using the benefit means I don't think there are any benefit which I explained to you the reason for that but even for the argument sake if we accept that there is some benefit even those countries who are benefiting that in a limited way from this may be excluded from using this option for instance India. India is now become an eligible country in the case of as per the leak text but the same criteria is applicable then they may not be and it's also important that currently the least developed countries are not mentioned so the any least developed countries who are complained to the TRIPS IP regime which has a TRIPS complaint intellectual property law then those countries may not be in a position to make use of the or to benefit out of this particular decision so that can seriously hamper the availability and accessibility of therapeutics and diagnostics in the developing world. Yes so basically also it's been referred to as a very anti-poor document so something that's you know that's really not taking into consideration any of the actual needs of low and middle income countries but on the other hand and this is maybe to give us a bit of perspective of what we can expect in the weeks and months to come this leak document is actually as you already said it's not a formal document it has not been accepted at the WTO. Can you tell us a bit more about what we should expect to see from the right to health movements in the in the near future what's still there to be done to stop this kind of document of passing through and whether you consider that it has actually any real chance of actually being endorsed by the WTO. As I told you earlier like the United States trade representative office and and WTO secretary issued statement that there are difference among members I mean reading between the lines it's very clear but both statement shows that there is no agreement on the text and we have we have not heard from India and South Africa yet and at the same time we are aware that there are many appeals coming from various part of the world requesting government of India and the South African government not to endorse this text. So I think the EU will along with the WTO secretary will exert pressure on India and South Africa to be part of this text and present it as a joint text by India, South Africa, US and EU and try to attempt to divide and rule basically 65 countries developing countries which includes India and South Africa are co-sponsoring this this waiver proposal. Now the attempt of the EU is to force India and South Africa to be part of this text and that's leaving the co-sponsorship and leaving that 65 member coalition and to reduce it into a 63 member coalition. So this would be the attempt they may make. I think therefore it is important for health groups and social movements to to expose this the EU strategy and use commercial interests over people's health and to appeal to all governments to especially the southern governments to not accept this text that includes India and South African government. So it is important that the developing country unity is maintained at the WTO on this issue and to reject EU's text and also tell secretariat not to when you as a negotiator of a process to procreate a deal or to to end and impasse, then the secretariat as an international organization should play a neutral role. It should not play a role to support a particular country and to be you know what we always say justice should not be done but it should be seen you know people should see that justice is done. So in this case WTO secretariat you know while engaging should maintain a level of transparency and should not side with any dominant member countries and and should not accept pressure on developing that is to accept this text also because the statement of the WTO DG also shows that oh this is a very very hard bargain and the compromise is reached and and this is the text and try to whitewash the whitewash the and very inequitable agreement which you know all of us international students know that you know many times the the powerful actors pushes an inequitable agreement and then once it is signed and when it is a classic example where it's pushed on developing countries and once it is signed then it became a legal text and then there is the whole moral obligation to obey the international regime which is highly inequitable. I think the the responsibility of the social movements and civil society organizations including people health movement at this moment is to convey and expose this inequity in reflected in the current leak text and appeal to our governments not to be part of this this deal. Thank you Gopa and of course we know that in the next few months we'll still be following what's going on with the trips waiver with the WTO meeting this summer in Geneva apparently and also with some high strain times for the European Union these days so it's definitely going to be interesting to see what happens. So thanks Gopa for joining us here. We hope to host you again at some point with better news maybe. Thanks also to everyone who tuned in for this issue of the people's health dispatch. We'll be back in two weeks and of course you can always subscribe to the newsletter to the telegram channel if you want to receive the bulletin directly to our inbox.