Covid: UK fighting patent-free Covid vaccine proposals - BBC Newsnight
#Newsnight has been leaked a World Health Organization (WHO) document revealing high income countries, including the UK, are fighting proposals designed to help developing countries manufacture their own #Covid19 vaccines. subscribe HERE
There are only global solutions to a global pandemic. Everyone says it - we hear rhetoric about generosity to the world’s poorest over supplies of key medicines. But do we actually mean it?
Now Newsnight has obtained a leaked draft of WHO discussions that show the efforts of some rich countries, including the UK, to block proposals that would help developing countries - many with no access to current Covid vaccine supplies - to increase their manufacturing capability.
The argument is that drugmakers need to keep control of their intellectual property to provide the incentive to invent vaccines in the first place.
A government spokesperson said:
“A global pandemic requires a global solution and the UK is leading from t