EU Pushes to Send More Covid Vaccine-Making Data to Africa
EU Pushes to Send More Covid Vaccine-Making Data to Africa
(Bloomberg) -- European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said it may be necessary to compel drugmakers to share their mRNA technology if Africa is ever to reduce its heavy reliance on the West for life-saving vaccines.
Following criticism that the West has been slow to share patented vaccine information with places like Africa, Europe is stepping up its support for helping inoculate African nations, where 80% of the population has yet to receive a single shot. The World Health Organization has plan to use a vaccine hub program that bypasses major pharmaceutical producers of the doses like Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc.
Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia were approved as the first recipients of the initiative. But the WHO’s mRNA vaccine hub plans to produce doses on its own using a recipe formulated from publicly available information of existing shots, rather than the most advanced technology.
“The goal is really to make sure that the technology is transferred and dismantled and shown in full scope,” von der Leyen said at a ceremony in Brussels on Friday on the sidelines of an EU-Africa summit. “Publicly available information is not enough. We are able to manage to create the regulatory frame that is necessary to really make it happen.”
Von der Leyen said it’s important that “we limit with this technology transfer the profitability of IP owners, that is the companies, while protecting a very precious good, and this is the intellectual property, what scientists have developed, and here I think we can find a bridge.” Compulsory licensing with limited deeply cut profits might be a way to go forward, she added.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the EU’s goal is “to ensure that IP isn’t set up as an obstacle to distributing vaccines where they are needed.”
“It’s an excellent practical exercise of cooperation through action,” said Macky Sall, president of Senegal which makes 1% of vaccines consumed in Africa. The continent, with a population of 1.2 billion people, aims to produce 60% of the doses it needs by 2040.
The agreement is one of many Europe intends to clinch with Africa as part of the 150 billion euros ($170 billion) it aims to help raise over the next seven years to invest in the continent’s health care, infrastructure and education.
The EU-Africa summit, held in Brussels this week after a five-year break, aimed to reset relations between the continents, which were marred during the onset of the pandemic amid accusations that rich nations withheld doses from Africa and imposed unfair travel restrictions as the omicron variant broke out.
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
