India presses for waiver of TRIPS proposal at WTO
March 02, 2021
A file photo of a flight carrying Covishield vaccine at Male in January. India has supplied 36.37 million vaccine doses to 35 countries - -
A file photo of a flight carrying Covishield vaccine at Male in January. India has supplied 36.37 million vaccine doses to 35 countries - -×
Warns that rich economies will continue to be at risk if infection keeps spreading India has made a fresh pitch for “true vaccine internationalism” at the WTO and warned developed nations that are blocking the proposal for a temporary waiver of intellectual property obligations that even if they vaccinated all their citizens, they will remain at risk of a sluggish recovery if infection continues to spread in emerging markets.
License more manufacturing sites in developing nations to produce vaccines: WTO DG
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Synopsis
The WTO MC12 will take place in November in Geneva. It was originally scheduled to take place in June 2020 in Kazakhstan but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Addressing the WTO General Council after taking office on March 1, she said that the world has a normal capacity to produce 3.5 billion doses of vaccines and now it seeks to manufacture 10 billion doses.
World Trade Organization (WTO) Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has called for the member countries to work with companies to license more manufacturing sites in developing countries and technology transfer citing “serious supply scarcity”.
“I am sure the industry will show big heart across the world and support the TRIPS waiver that India has proposed at the WTO so that the entire world can come out of the covid pandemic much faster and bring back the V shaped recovery to the entire world,” Goyal said.