These left-wing candidates asked the Head of State "the urgent organization of a ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO)" to "allow the lifting of patents and access to vaccines" in particular to poorest countries, according to a letter obtained by AFP.
The signatories, alongside the two co-founders of the Observatory of Transparency in Medicines Policies (OTMeds), lamented that "74% of all vaccines supplied last year went to high-income and low-income countries. upper middle class", while "less than 1% of them went to low-income countries".
“The necessary strategy” therefore, in their eyes, “is to allow low- and middle-income countries which have the possibility to produce vaccines against Covid-19”, “to meet global needs” and “ control the pandemic".
Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI), Yannick Jadot (EELV), Anne Hidalgo (PS) and Philippe Poutou (NPA), in addition to Pauline Londeix and Jérôme Martin of OTMeds, wrote "not being able to accept seeing France block this request" at the international level, noting according to them "the worrying absence of concrete actions" of the French government.
Doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19 in a social center in Septeme-Les-Vallons, near Marseille, on January 12, 2022 CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU AFP
While many states, including the United States, support a suspension of intellectual property rights for treatments and vaccines against Covid-19, EU countries have already expressed their skepticism.
President Emmanuel Macron first called for the vaccine to be a "global public good", before backtracking.
"This blockage which maintains the status quo puts us all in danger and exposes us to the arrival of new variants, which may escape current vaccines", castigated Ms. Londeix in a press release, calling on the President of the Republic to " demonstrate responsibility".
“While France has just taken over the presidency of the Council of the EU”, the six signatories of this letter thus urged Emmanuel Macron to “express publicly and work in favor of the lifting of patents”, and “to request the holding as soon as possible of the WTO meeting initially scheduled for November 2021" on the subject, postponed due to the Omicron variant.
For Mr. Mélenchon, quoted in the press release, "as long as millions of people remain undamaged in the face of contamination, no end to the pandemic is possible".
His rival on the left Yannick Jadot estimated that "without a large vaccination campaign on a global scale, we condemn hundreds of thousands of people".
© 2022 AFP