The issue of access to anti-Covid vaccines should be on the menu of the already busy discussions of the summit of leaders of the European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU) Thursday 17 and Friday 18 February in Brussels.

African states support the lifting of patents, which the Twenty-Seven continue to refuse. 

Proof of the determination of African states, the members of the AU have planned to include this request in the conclusions of the summit, revealed AFP.

“The African Union […] urges the European Union to engage constructively towards the conclusion of a targeted and time-limited [patent] waiver,” reads a document seen by the agency. hurry.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, several emerging countries, including India and South Africa, have called for a temporary abandonment of intellectual property protections for vaccines in the fight against the pandemic.

They believe that such a move would boost production globally and help address inequalities of access between rich and poor nations. 

More than a year after the administration of the first vaccines against Covid-19 and two years after the start of the pandemic, only 11.3% of Africans have been fully immunized, making it the least vaccinated continent in the world. .

However, Africa must "multiply the vaccination rate by six" to hope to reach the target of 70% vaccination coverage set for the end of the first half of 2022, a necessary condition for exiting the "acute phase" of the pandemic. globally, according to the WHO.  

The Twenty-Seven remain firmly opposed to the lifting of patents 

The EU has donated nearly 150 million doses of anti-Covid vaccines and allocated to Africa 10 of the 46 billion euros of its financial support for the fight against the pandemic in third countries.

But giving doses is insufficient, denounce many local actors, as well as international NGOs, believing that vaccines must also be produced on site as quickly as possible. 

A lifting of patents, as the WHO has repeatedly pointed out, would allow "low- and middle-income countries [according to the World Bank classification]" to set up their own pharmaceutical production infrastructure, in order to to distribute vaccines more quickly to the local population, with generics sold at a much lower price. 

>> To read on France24.com: Anti-Covid-19 vaccine: the lifting of patents, a long obstacle course

But three days before the summit with the AU, the European ministers in charge of the dossier reiterated their opposition, despite repeated appeals from the African side.

The Europeans, including France, preferred to speak on Monday of "voluntary licenses".

They indicated that they had supported a proposal from the European Commission aimed at facilitating these famous licenses, which are only monetized authorizations, granted by laboratories to companies to manufacture and export their vaccines.

But manufacturing recipes will remain protected between partner companies. 

“Voluntary licenses”, “compulsory licenses”… Unrealizable devices? 

Another track mentioned by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on February 8, that of "compulsory licenses" that the Europeans would like to "facilitate".

This mechanism of the World Trade Organization (WTO) allows States to compel a pharmaceutical laboratory to grant them authorization to produce or have produced the vaccine, citing public health reasons.

A procedure that amounts to bypassing international patent law in times of crisis or medical emergency. 

A "lack of courage" from the EU, denounces the NGO fighting poverty ONE, which believes that "the Europeans do not want to change anything, they do not propose anything that goes beyond what already exists in international agreements ".

"Voluntary licenses, compulsory licenses... These devices have already existed for years under the aegis of the WTO, and they are not applied. No pharmaceutical company has given voluntary licenses on vaccines and no State dared to ask for a compulsory license", denounces to France 24 Maé Kurkjian, advocacy manager at ONE.  

In practice, compulsory licenses remain almost impossible to implement.

One of the major obstacles lies in the fact that the pharmaceutical laboratory is entitled to remuneration for the use of its molecule or its vaccine, specifies the regulations of the WTO.

However, it risks, in retaliation, asking the countries which would embark on this procedure for a large sum of compensation.

Similarly, states that dare to attack large pharmaceutical groups could be sanctioned by seeing themselves “demoted in the long global queue for its doses of anti-Covid vaccines”, notes the NGO. 

"The EU plays with words and this vocabulary story is essential. African countries are working to introduce the word 'Waiver' which means in English 'removal of patents' in the final communiqué of the EU-AU summit, but European countries resist", underlines Maé Kurkjian. 

The argument of the brake on the innovation of research laboratories 

When the patents were lifted, the Europeans retorted that it was to better fight against future health threats that pharmaceutical companies needed to protect their formulas.

A "lifting of patents", thus warned Ursula von der Leyen, "could have significant negative consequences on the financing of innovation".

However, part of the research for the anti-Covid vaccine has been funded by the States.  

"BioNTech is a German laboratory, Astrazeneca is British and many factories are located elsewhere in Europe. We defend our economic and industrial interests. What is at stake are the economic interests of northern countries against access to the care of countries of the South", regrets Maé Kurkjian, who denounces a blockage of the EU on the lifting of patents, including within the WTO.  

>> To read also on France24.com: Vaccines: BioNTech, a lab with golden eggs for the city of Mainz

However, on the American side, President Joe Biden, initially reluctant, took the plunge in May 2021 by announcing that the United States supported a provisional lifting of patents on vaccines against Covid-19.

"It's been said publicly and it's a big step, but everything must be done behind the scenes for it to be applied now, but since the spring nothing has changed", however tempers the representative of the NGO ONE .

Asked about this on France 24 on Monday, the American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, simply replied that “work is [being done] at the moment”, reiterating the commitment of the United States for a lifting of the patents. 

French double discourse 

As for France, Maé Kurkjian believes that it leads an "incomprehensible double discourse".

On the one hand, President Emmanuel Macron spoke out in favor of lifting the patents in June 2021 in the light of a meeting with NGOs in France.

On the other, its Minister of Commerce, Franck Riester, repeated at the start of the week the desire to "further facilitate access to voluntary licenses, to compulsory licenses which already exist […] in the most constructive way possible".

"Today France is behind the Europeans, and Emmanuel Macron is unable to implement what he said, while the EU presidency would have been a great opportunity to change things," said the activist.  

If an agreement on the lifting of patents at the EU-AU summit seems a long way off between the two continents, the Europeans are on the other hand ready to continue to support development programs for the local manufacture of the anti-Covid vaccine in Africa.

Production center projects are planned in Senegal, Rwanda, Ghana and South Africa with European funding of one billion euros in total.  

For Rwanda and Senegal, the German laboratory BioNTech indicated in October that it would begin construction of messenger RNA vaccine production sites in mid-2022. 

South Africa did not wait.

Cape Town-based biotech company Afrigen just announced on Feb. 3 the manufacture of the first messenger RNA vaccine against Covid-19 in Africa.

Developed from a sequencing of the genetic code of Covid-19 by the Moderna laboratory, publicly available, this vaccine will be ready for clinical trials in November 2022, and its registration is scheduled for 2024. This would be a first, carried out without any patent.

The EU and five countries including France, but also the United Nations are among the funders of this project.

With AFP

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