The world’s largest pharmaceutical companies’ bosses have issued a call to G7 leaders to oppose the inclusion of intellectual property rights waivers and pathogen benefit sharing in the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) pandemic treaty.
In meetings with Japanese Prime Minister and chair of next month’s G7 summit Fumio Kishida this week, a delegation of 24 CEOs from the industry group, the Biopharmaceutical Roundtable (BCR), argued that the current draft of the pandemic accord would make the world less prepared for the next pandemic by threatening IP rights and slowing the pace of pathogen sequence sharing.
The case made by BCR in its open letter is based on the role pharmaceutical companies have played in returning a sense of relative normalcy to life since the height of the pandemic, reports Health Policy Watch.
“… it’s fair to say the industry success in developing and scaling up vaccines, treatments, and test diagnostics at record speed was key to getting our societies out of the pandemic,” said Jean-Christophe Tellier, BCR chairman and president of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA).
“(Protection of) intellectual property rights (IP) … is one of the lessons from Covid-19.”
Global health and medicines access advocates have praised the strength of the WHO zero-draft in areas like IP waivers, which many believe would prevent a repeat of the limited and delayed access to life-saving drugs experienced by countries unable to afford the steep prices demanded by pharmaceutical companies at the pandemic’s start.
“IP was never an issue for access in low and middle income countries,” Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks said. “As countries and multilateral organisations begin to advance future pandemic preparedness plans, it is critical that such frameworks prioritise and further strengthen the innovation ecosystem, which is built upon strong intellectual property, a vibrant private sector and fair value for innovation.
“This is specifically what we have requested the G7 leaders to consider,” he said.
The idea that IP protections were essential to the record speed at which pharmaceutical companies got vaccines on to shelves is heavily contested.
Industry groups like BCR and IFPMA say that without them, their incentive to innovate and invest in research and development is not sufficient to justify the costs. Since 2010, average research and development costs have risen 43% to almost $2bn per drug.
“We must prevent the weakening of the international IP protections that would result from unnecessary and misguided proposals to waive the TRIPS agreement for vaccines and therapeutics,” Ricks said.
The UN’s intellectual property agency has estimated the social benefits of Covid vaccines at $70.5trn annually, nearly 900 times the estimated private sector revenues of $130.5bn.
“Almost two years of the vaccination programme … prevented 60m deaths,” said WHO executive board member and International University of Health & Welfare president Yasuhiro Suzuki, “worth the money invested in the pharmaceutical sector.”
Pathogen benefit sharing slows access to sequences
Pathogen benefit sharing is another key point of contention in negotiations at the WHO. Currently, the pandemic accord would allow countries sharing genetic sequences to seek financial compensation for uploading them to open databases.
The first Covid-19 vaccine went into production just 66 days after the genome sequence was shared by Chinese scientists. Without that sequence, the development of vaccines would have been impossible.
Pharmaceutical companies argue that providing a financial incentive for countries to share critical genome sequences could result in a cost paid in thousands of lives in the event of another pandemic.
“Such approaches would probably delay access to pathogens and the timely development of medical countermeasures in the event of a pandemic,” IFPMA director-general Thomas Cueni told Health Policy Watch.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Partial TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines – finally
Developing nations plead for fairer treatment access
WHO chief calls for Trips waiver and praises SA’s vaccine development project
Global health regulations amended for future pandemics