 Translation of patents kills live from the ICP. Hi, my name is Anna Jung. I work as a consultant for global health at the Frankfurt NGO, Medical International. And I will be talking about how politics and pharma companies prevent fair access to COVID vaccinations. Let me quickly talk about Medical International. Medical was founded in 1968 in Frankfurt with the aim to provide medical emergency services and aid during catastrophes. And you can see some pictures already. In the mid 1970s, Medical shifted its focus onto politics, going away from exporting drugs and putting a spot light on how drug pricing works and the role the pharma industry plays in that process. Since then, Medical advocates for changing unhealthy living situations and today supports project partners in more than 40 countries worldwide. This drug exporting effort was replaced by long term support of local project partners supported by campaign efforts that initially were very critical of the pharma industry and thus we arrive at the topic of this talk. News about the success in developing a vaccine for COVID probably had a bigger impact on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and then in the slums of Dakar and Nairobi. Here you can see images of, on the first picture you can see Ethiopian workers that as domestic workers in Nairobi and who have been sitting on the streets or living on the streets since the major explosion and waiting for the return home, all the while being very exposed to the virus. Here you can see an impression of Nairobi's slum, the Kenyan capital. Many there this is also a picture from Nairobi are too poor to get good quality masks. This is an image from Moria, the refugee camp on the Greek islands on Lesbos. They not just since the fire, they were very exposed to the virus because the healthcare provided isn't sufficient and they definitely won't be among the first to receive the vaccination. This last image shows the Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. No one is safe from COVID-19 until everyone is safe from it. This is an insight that we probably all share including German federal president Steinmeier who emphasized it during his speech before the World Health Organization, WHO. Even anyone who defeats COVID within their own national borders will be jailed within them if it's not defeated everywhere. Ursula von der Leyen, the newly appointed EU council president also says that the vaccination is our universal property like the common and stresses the universal right to health. That means the deliverance from the virus necessitates a global effort and no one will honestly oppose that. But there's this one small snag, the governments of the industrial nations prevent just that the fair access to the vaccine for all human beings. It's easy to see that Germany, Europe and other industrial nations that only make up about 14 percent of the global population have already secured more than half of the vaccine that had yet to be produced. The rich nations have already reserved more than five billion doses of the successful vaccine candidates while only a small percentage of them is available for the poorer countries. You can see this here if you take a look at the map if you look at Europe you see Europe and the USA and other industrial nations they will be among the first to have access to the vaccine here now continues and the poorest countries many among them from Africa will probably among the last to gain access. If you look at the policy making decisions it quickly becomes obvious that the industrialized nations still stick to a neoliberal policy that puts the right to profits for companies ahead of the fair access ahead of the human right especially the fair access to the vaccine. That means this order of inequality is being defended with all available force which you can take somewhat literally. This struggle for access to the upcoming vaccines shows you how the crisis is supposed to be solved i.e. by taking advantage of the poor. That side effects will be deadly and will lead to a sharp increase in economical and social inequalities and increase in poverty and certain diseases that cannot be treated sufficiently anymore like HIV AIDS malaria and many others. That means there will be a renaissance of the global divide in north and south even though this is supposed to be abolished if you listen to Sunday speeches. There are no there's no shortage of alternatives. A short while ago the governments of India and South Africa have petitioned the WHO so the World Trade Organization not the WHO for an exception to the TRIPS agreement and the TRIPS agreement regulates or governs patents and trade-related aspects of international property. The two governments argue that they need a ornamental and comprehensive suspension of patent regulations until the global population has reached immunity against the virus. This TRIPS treaty which is still controversial was concluded in 1995 at the initiative of industrialized nations and international companies. Interestingly, also Pfizer was one of the manufacturers of the COVID-19 vaccine. But there's also other companies that are better known and they were the chaos like IBM, HP, Microsoft and especially Microsoft is important because for something that I want to explain later it's one of the companies with which the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation generates its capital and which is also very important in the realm of the global health. The explicit goal of the TRIPS agreement was to to secure the patents against public interests and by and wiping away all the concerns that the global concern the global south was already uttering back then. The treaty provides for exemptions that allowed in the state of an health emergency via compulsory licenses for parallel imports and thus bypassing patent protection. The waiver that was proposed by South African India includes an exception and it's clear that we have an exceptional situation now since it's obviously a global crisis regarding the health and the intellectual property protections should afford for a timely supply with affordable medical products and thus the production of generic drugs that have the same ingredients but not the same brand name and are thus a lot cheaper than the original drugs which clearly is in the interest of poorer countries. It's a great idea that the two countries had and even the federal government so the the german government should be excited. Let me quote again no one is safe from the virus until everyone is safe but it's not working at all. The US, the EU, the UK, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, Canada, Australia, Brazil, they all rejected the proposal outright. Almost 100 countries all from the poor countries in the global south are excited to support the proposal but since the WTO has to agree or has to decide on all proposals via consensus a few countries can just block the global of the majority. There are 164 countries within that organisation so 100 is actually overwhelming. An interesting thing I want to note is how the vaccine was developed. The main argument against this exception at the World Trade Organisation is that without the pharma industry there will not be any development of new vaccines but if you look at this overview you don't need to look at it in detail. It's enough to look at how much of it is blue and yellow. You can see that the majority of the funds for the vaccine development was given by the public or through government funds but also alternative foundations like GAVI and the Gates Foundation while a much smaller percentage was provided by the pharma industry itself. So we can actually deduce that these vaccines are our common property but we can actually see that the funds that were actually provided or covered by public money while it's already clear that the profits for the pharma industry for the vaccines will be quite high. Here you can see the development of the stock price after the announcement of the vaccination. So it's very to say regarding the discussion at the World Trade Organisation that the universal right to health is subordinated to the right to profit and this is even more scandalous since we have many years of experience and but the kind of dramatic effect this choice has if you look at the HIV and AIDS crisis of the 80s which is definitely still happening today. Up to this day more than half a million people die as a result of HIV and AIDS. As a result of the patent regulation which the TRIPS agreement is just an example of every price reduction of HIV and AIDS medication had to be wrangled from them by a global fight for the right and tens of thousands had to die because of the high drug prices from AIDS alone. This is the reason for the title Patent Kill. Nevertheless this explanation that there will not be scientific research without the pharma industry is still stuck in the heads of many even though it's just not true. The governments of the world provide billions for R&D. The EU alone is involved with six and a half billion. Those are mostly public funds that large sums of which go to drug companies without changing the price of the public interest for the future vaccine in public interest. It should be obvious and self-provided that there needs to be a democratic control. And it should be known the prices at which the vaccines are sold should be public knowledge. So politics unfortunately did not learn from the experiences of the HIV AIDS crisis but they stuck to the logics which I just elaborated on. The trade manager of pre-samples said that incentives for innovation are provided by patents and also the EU said that there is there are no there's no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine politics leads to inhibitions but it's obvious that it does in fact. The negotiations at the WTO are still ongoing and we can only hope and only exert public pressure so that industrial nations will change their shift and accept the proposal by South Africa and India. So as an intermediate conclusion we could say that the industrial nations governments still are not ready to work on their systems and adapt them. Now we're getting from the WTO to the WHO. Costa Rica with support from the WHO made a proposal at the very beginning of the pandemic because the WHO soon knew about the danger of the patent regime towards a fair distribution of the vaccine. So that is why with Costa Rica's initiative they founded a COVID-19 technology access pool called CTAB. CTAB was created in order to share patents, know-how, data and software and facilitate transfer. You know these concepts from IT and it's a very good approach to have this knowledge open to everyone so that everyone can develop them further. This is not a revolutionary approach because we've already had it in the HIV AIDS crisis with very good results. It helped create processes that made it possible for prices for drugs for HIV and AIDS to be made fairer. So how did this go on? 40 countries joined the CTAB initiative and not surprisingly those were mostly countries from the global south. Only Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal joined from the European countries. Almost all the big pharmaceutical industry having countries didn't intervene and also pharmaceutical companies were quick to react. Pfizer for example called the proposition the proposal dangerous and pointless because instead it was suggested that pharmaceutical companies could make voluntary contributions and almost all the pharmaceutical companies agreed to that because they said it worked so well in the AIDS and HIV crisis. Patents impact how a pandemic or an epidemic impacts the population numbers. This isn't revolutionary because it is still in the patent debate. Still the industrial nations chose a different path. They reacted differently to the crisis. It is clear and it always only becomes the clearer that they stick to their old principles and that they actively prevent development. Of course they have their own interests because they know that politically they will have to find a way and that is why they do exactly what has been so typical of the industrial nations policies so far. Public-private partnerships are the prime principle that is applied here. There was an initiative called ACT that was in the context of the COVAX where vaccination initiatives work together with the WHO and other organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which in recent years has become one of the most important private funders of the WHO. So I hope that you know how this all works together but we'll repeat it again. The TRIPS agreement that led to the crisis in life-saving medications was on Microsoft's initiative and others. The TRIPS agreement led to the profits led to a huge growth in profits and that money is now being used in to finance vaccinations. And that is Philanthrocapitalism as many symptoms, conspiracy theories say, have opinions about that. But it's very important that patterns remain untouched because the foundation does not want these patterns to be eliminated. So the new vaccine alliance gives private investors room or the opportunity to provide funds. That is clear but it is not stressed enough that vaccinations should be a public good and that countries of the global south are still stuck in their role of waiting for help that is provided voluntarily and not within a legal framework. So we see that patterns make medication more expensive and that is why we chose the slogan patterns are expensive but unfair. And this unfairness is not just about the vaccine. Here you can see a demonstration of textile workers in Pakistan from a Pakistani union and they have huge economic difficulties because their deliveries were not taken. And this is just for context. This is not just a question of vaccines but also other capitalistic impacts on production, other impacts of the pandemic. And this is a more optimistic picture. Those are Cuban health workers who went to South Africa to support the local health industry. So the solution would be very easy. If we want to fight the pandemic, it's essential that we eliminate patterns on vaccinations and medication. This is a small film from our organization describing the problem which I also just described in the talk and the solution that vaccinations must be public property and it calls to sign our petitions. So let's get to the conclusion. A global health policy can only work if we apply humanitarian principles and if we globalize patterns, who do the patterns belong to, the people and the polio vaccine creator said that the vaccine belongs to everyone and just as well as he wouldn't patent the sun, he wouldn't patent his vaccine and this is how polio was eliminated or almost eliminated. So we need something else than the models proposed by the industrial nations. We need policies oriented towards the benefit of global health. We need to treat patterns as in the hand of the people and we must limit the power of pharmaceutical industry and it's necessary to adjust the prices for medication so that innovations are made available to anyone. And questioning this principle only means that you question the whole system and that isn't going to happen on its own. So this is why we created a global initiative to make political, exert political pressure. What is interesting is that it's working. We are taking first steps. People are becoming aware of how unfair the prices for drugs and medications are and we can only hope that those who get the vaccination first will feel like we feel when we were clothing unfairly produced in the global south. So I'm very grateful to have been able to talk about this in this format in this Congress. Thank you for the presentation. We have some questions from the internet and I'll start right away. A question from the internet. How would we develop the drugs so that they're affordable? This question about financing is something that is posed to us a lot, but the assumption is that without pharma industry there is not going to be any development or R&D. But in our point of view, this has been calculated and there are many organizations that stress that it can be financed from the public funds with public money because we would save so much money in the long run. And already it's already true that many of the funds come from public money. And you will get a good result if you just switch to financing where it's all public. And we're not demanding to disappropriate or disenfranchise the drug industry. Today we will definitely earn a lot of money still from the production and distribution of funds. But we also support a claim to cap drug prices. Thanks. If governments are providing funds, shouldn't it be public good? Yeah, this is basically the gist of it or the core of the question. At the moment we have the situation that the risks are being shouldered by the public, by all of us. Whereas the drug industry is responsible for the long term problems and the profits are being privatized. The absurd thing about it is that there are a lot of contracts, including the German Republic and the Parma industry. And they don't involve the final price for the drug that is being developed. The terms are not clear and they're not being met. And at the same time you can see a deficit of democratic involvement here. Yeah, another question that fits this would poor countries even have a possibility to create those vaccines themselves? Not automatically. It's clear that on the African continent where I'm rather knowledgeable, since I'm responsible for that region within my organization for many years. There is definitely a shortage of production capacity. And definitely the production is very complex. And you can't just tell a textile manufacturer a factory to just switch over to drug production. And we would have to have started that earlier. But it's definitely we do that we also need to think longer term, just even after COVID. The problem doesn't go away. But for example, in many Asian countries like India or Bangladesh, there are many factories that are already producing drugs for the West even. But it's also true that this production has been weakened by the patent regulation regime. And it would already be possible for many of the poorer countries to produce the drugs that they need. Follow up question. How about production bottlenecks? What kind of production bottlenecks do you see? Just for your example. Well, regarding the Corona vaccine, interesting. So look at the look at the news in Germany. It's already true that Biontech is not able to produce the vaccine as quickly as would be needed right now. And it's already being considered to offshore that or to do it on other sites. And even in this new capitalist or neoliberal regime, we're already thinking about licensing and franchising. And the recipe for the vaccine is being passed on to them. Because this is a problem that threatens the whole of humanity and that needs to be solved. And now that there is a problem in Germany, we're starting to think about this even though we denied their claims beforehand. And the core of the problem at the moment is that there's a lack of political will. It's easy to get funding for stuff that affects the industrialized world, but not for the rest of the world. The next question. How many companies are part of the TRIPS agreement? And how many profits did they make from that? Not like it's just companies that sponsored the TRIPS agreement with the WTO are the ones that are involved. The regulations extend to all companies. So there's also another talk today here at the RC3. There are smaller companies that build a kind of interest group, want to propel the protection of the IP and want strong product and production. And Pfizer was also involved in that, but fundamentally the pros for the companies for the society as a whole. Another comment from the chat. Somebody's asking if companies, I think it's about licensing patents. Wouldn't it also be a possibility to something about patents? That's definitely a possible solution. That's actually the same thing that the WHO is proposing. And they're not announcing socialism, but they actually made a very wise proposal to get the vaccine in the safest and quickest way possible to all people. But it's also true that these licenses are not given out voluntarily. It just didn't happen at all. Considering, for example, HIV and AIDS medication, but there's always some licensing fee that has to be paid to all the involved companies and then it's produced somewhere else. But most of the companies don't want that. AstraZeneca was doing it. That's why there's already a lot of vaccines that are being produced in India. But the others are trying to oppose that. And politics have a lot of levers on several different levels. And there are exceptions in the TRIPS agreement, but there's also the possibility to declare a global emergency or a global medical emergency with WHO. And then there are certain public safety regulations or laws that you could employ to have extra options. And if you take all that into account, you see that the governments of the Western world made a very conscious decision to put the profits of the company ahead of the public safety. And none of this actually makes sense from a health perspective. Couldn't Poracanti just ignore the patent not just because of corona, but generally? That have been afforded to the very poorest of countries in the past. And they fought for that over years. And they paid a very high price for that. I mean, you have to take that title literally patents kill. Many 10,000, probably hundreds of thousands of people have died because they didn't have access or affordable access to necessary medication. But the danger for these very poor country is very real. It's for them it's just not possible to get access to corona vaccination. I mean, what are they going to do, steal it from the production line or and just distribute it. But even that wouldn't be possible, really. If countries said we need to produce drugs, it's just in the public interest and critical to the to the health of our populace. Then they were punished by cancelling their development funds. For example, this is a very ugly, right, even on a simple, more simple level. We could see that, for example, in Mexico, when the government and tried to ban certain highly refined sugars imported from the USA, because they had a spike in type two diabetes. And then the U.S. employed the trade agreement NAFTA. Using that treaty, the American sugar industry sued the Mexican government. And they were forced to take that back. So you see, there is a risk to the public safety with the way that these treaties are set up. There's always the question of human rights on the table when you do these trade agreements. And the profits always get priority. So we're running out of time, unfortunately. But thank you again for this fascinating presentation and for answering our questions. There are some more questions. But unfortunately, we don't have time. You can email me with the questions, actually. And we're also reachable on medico.org. And you can send us the questions by mail, and we'll be happy to answer them. Thank you. So to the chat, to those watching the streams, go on the medical website and ask your questions. Now onto the Harold News Show. Have fun during the next few days. See you. Bye.