The World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Board is meeting this week—here’s what you can expect and why this is the prime opportunity to discuss how we can best vaccinate the world.
What’s happening this week:WHO’s Executive Board meeting (January 24-29, 2022). Key agenda items include developing a convention or agreement on pandemic preparedness and response, as well as strategies to reduce or eliminate HIV, cervical cancer, tuberculosis, neglected tropical diseases, and much more.
Expect COVID-19 to dominate headlines—including how best to vaccinate the rest of the world as more than 71 million new cases have been recorded in the past four weeks.
“There is no path out unless we achieve our shared target of vaccinating 70% of the population of every country by the middle of this year,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus opened the session, noting COVAX has now delivered 1 billion doses as of last week.
But eliminating patent protections is not the answer, said Svenja Schulze, Germany’s Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, during this morning’s press conference. Germany remains opposed to the proposed waiver of the World Trade Organization (WTO) TRIPS agreement.
“We are convinced that patent protection encourages innovation. It led to the development of these vaccines,” she said (in German with English translation)—which is exactly what BIO and our international counterparts told the WTO in November.
“It’s not enough to just pass on the patent,” she continued. “What we need is cooperation and knowledge transfer, innovative partnerships,” to scale vaccine production in developing countries and importantly ensure the vaccines “are actually administered.”
And in fact, waiving IP protections would compromise vaccination efforts,BIO President and CEO Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath explained last year. The better solution is to continue to share vaccines globally—here’s how.
In other WHO news… the U.S. “is resisting proposals to make the agency more independent,” Reuters reports, while the WHO and U.S. EPA signed a five-year agreement to collaborate on “crosscutting environment and health issues.”
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