Covid: UK fighting patent-free Covid vaccine proposals – BBC Newsnight

#Newsnight has been leaked a World Health Organization (WHO) document revealing high income countries, including the UK, are fighting proposals designed to help developing countries manufacture their own #Covid19 vaccines. subscribe HERE http://bit.ly/1rbfUog

There are only global solutions to a global pandemic. Everyone says it – we hear rhetoric about generosity to the world’s poorest over supplies of key medicines. But do we actually mean it?

Now Newsnight has obtained a leaked draft of WHO discussions that show the efforts of some rich countries, including the UK, to block proposals that would help developing countries – many with no access to current Covid vaccine supplies – to increase their manufacturing capability.

The argument is that drugmakers need to keep control of their intellectual property to provide the incentive to invent vaccines in the first place.

A government spokesperson said:

“A global pandemic requires a global solution and the UK is leading from the front, driving forward efforts to ensure equitable access around the world to COVID vaccines and treatments.

“As one of the largest donors to COVAX, our funding is going to help to distribute one billion doses of coronavirus vaccines to developing countries this year alone.”
 
Health Correspondent Deb Cohen reports.

#Coronavirus #BBCNews

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