Irish Coalition calls for government action on WHO waiver to address COVID-19 vaccine inequality
Comhlámh and member group Access to Medicines Ireland have joined call’s for urgent support for the Covid-19 emergency waiver of World Trade Organisation rules so more vaccines and treatment can urgently be produced, in an open letter to Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
The letter, signed by Access to Medicine Ireland, ActionAid, Amnesty International Ireland, Comhlámh, Concern, Dóchas, Goal, the Irish Global Health Network, INMO, MSF, Oxfam Ireland and Trócaire, details how the EU’s current position threatens the prospects of ending the Covid-19 pandemic. Namely, by blocking the “Waiver from Certain Provisions of the TRIPS Agreement for the Prevention, Containment and Treatment of Covid-19” – a waiver that is supported by more than 100 nations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
The groups have stated:
“Such global inequity is not only a catastrophic moral failure that will lead to needless suffering and loss of life. Ongoing outbreaks anywhere mean greater risk of new variants developing against which vaccines are not effective and/or that can evade the antibodies developed by survivors. There simply is no way to defeat Covid-19 in Ireland without united action worldwide.”
“Ireland has a well-deserved reputation of supporting the human rights of the world’s poorest people. We are respected for our constructive engagement, acknowledging the importance of collective efforts amongst states for the problems that pay no heed to borders, such as the coronavirus pandemic. With so many of the world’s poorer nations supporting this emergency waiver already, you can help maintain Ireland’s moral and public health leadership in the world by siding with the majority to prioritise saving lives. Indeed, not doing so is self-defeating, as it is clear that the sooner the world’s population is vaccinated, the sooner EU citizens are safe.
“Thus, we respectfully request that you break with the unconscionable policies the EU has supported before the next WTO General Council meeting of March 1-2 and announce that Ireland will no longer support opposition to the temporary, emergency Covid-19 WTO waiver of certain TRIPS provisions.”
The WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) requires WTO members to provide lengthy monopoly protections for medicines, tests and the technologies used to produce them. After a global campaign by public health and development groups, in 2001 the WTO issued a binding declaration about better balancing TRIPS intellectual property protections and public health needs. A temporary emergency Covid-19 waiver is in line with the WTO members’ agreement that intellectual property rules cannot create barriers to health treatments for diseases that unnecessarily cost human lives and undermine the global economy.
You can read the letter in full here