In Latin America, vaccines are produced in Brazil, a country against liberalization; in Cuba; and by an alliance between Argentina and Mexico. Moreover, Dominican Republic claimed to be able to produce them, but its request was ignored despite being a request that foresaw a payment to access a know-how covered by IP rights.
Something similar occurred in Asia, where there are 2 major producing countries, one of which is India, promoter of the liberalization. In Bangladesh, a local vaccine producer company, Incepta, would have been ready to pay a fair price to have the possibility of producing a vaccine and also in this case the proposal has been ignored.
This does not mean that pharmaceutical companies exclude external production, but they prefer to negotiate the conditions case by case, and apparently what they can obtain in advanced countries is more profitable, also because it is accompanied by substantial purchase options.
This is justified with a variety of arguments, but the bottom line is that sharing this knowledge is not convenient for the companies.
Thus, the request of Médecins sans Frontières, prior to the WTO March meeting, and the statement of the director of health policies of Oxfam International were ignored, according to which rich countries are vaccinating one person per second (actually more, but the image is striking), while those with fewer resources receive a few tens of thousands of doses.
The issue will be discussed again by the WTO in April, but it is difficult to share the new director general’s optimism about the possibility that manufacturers will sit down with the World Health Organization or the GAVI Vaccine Alliance, of which before being appointed WTO director general, she was president and reached an agreement that would allow the millions of people waiting with bated breath that these discussions have finally led to a solution.
Something similar had already been proposed by the Secretary General of the United Nations who also included among the relevant actors the governments, since they would be able to impose liberalization.
Probably, the governments of rich countries were naive when they supported significantly the research that eventually led to the vaccines without a better guarantee than certain rights of preference for future purchases. Unfortunately, what many people think, that this large use of public money should imply that vaccines are a public good, is not shared by the big companies.
