Coronavirus: will poor countries have access to the future vaccine?

Text by: David Baché

Many countries and private economic players, under the aegis of the World Health Organization (WHO), are committed to accelerating the production of vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests against the new coronavirus. With a major challenge: ensuring access to the future vaccine, when it is found, for everyone, worldwide. Interview with Philippe Abecassis, health economist, lecturer at Sorbonne-Paris Nord University, and author of The Economy of Medicines.

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RFI : Medicines and vaccines being protected by intellectual property licenses, they belong to the laboratories that develop and produce them, with commercial aims. In these conditions, how can the accessibility of the future vaccine for developing countries be guaranteed ?

Philippe Abecassis: The legal solution already exists. These are compulsory licenses, that is to say the possibility for a country which needs a drug, therefore a vaccine, to take a license on an existing drug, whatever the private company. who produces it. The country can therefore request the production of this drug, obviously paying the property rights, but without needing the authorization of the producer. It is a legal process of the WTO [World Trade Organization] which is somewhat complex, but which in this case may be fully accepted and implemented.

This solution solves the legal problem but not the financing problem, since you still have to pay. In the case of developing countries, this will not be obvious ...

No, it is not obvious to all developing countries, but one can imagine that in this case, organizations such as the Bill Gates Foundation, which does it for other things, could help countries which need it the most.

Especially since often we do not go as far as compulsory licenses. Agreements are sometimes made, so it becomes voluntary licenses. The producers of the drug agree to lower the prices, so that the countries gain access to the drug and that the firms make out correctly, that is to say that they actually receive royalties without going through an extremely complex legal procedure .

So it is by one of these two ways that developing countries could go to access the future vaccine against Covid-19, when it is found ?

These processes already exist, but it is not impossible that a new process is invented, and this is what I strongly wish: that there is a completely voluntary approach, beyond this legal framework of the WTO. That is to say that the companies agree, without legal procedure, to distribute this vaccine free of charge to all the countries and individuals who need it. It is also a possibility and for certain rare diseases, it happens that firms do it.

In this case, given the commercial stake of this future vaccine, isn't a free and voluntary approach on the part of private laboratories a bit utopian ?

No, it is not unrealistic because the companies can play on the fact that they can sell the relatively expensive vaccine to countries which can afford to pay it, and offer it to countries which cannot afford it. the. It would be a charitable approach, but also a commercial one for the rest of their activity. They can also do this in a marketing vision.

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