The intellectuals are divided on the contentious issue of the suspension of Intellectual property rights and the protection of Public health. India and South Africa have floated an idea in the World Trade Organization of a patent waiver, overriding patent rules, allowing generic or other manufacturers to make vaccines and drugs till the people develop “herd immunity” and the pandemic is declared over. Hundreds of countries have come out in favour of India and South Africa. Many noble laureates, health advocates and human rights bodies also advocated for the patent waiver. However, the rich countries. Although USA and Europe have indicated that they are considering to support India, are reluctant to vote for the same because of their vaccine hoardings or vaccine nationalism and the plea to revoke intellectual property rights have so far been ineffective. 

Consequently, disturbing figures are coming out about the disparity in vaccination. To vaccinate about 70% of the total population, the world needs more or less 11 billion doses of the vaccine. presuming two doses per capita. Extraordinarily, more than 8.6 billion orders have been corroborated. But around 6 billion of these vaccines will go to rich countries, and the rest to the poor countries from where 80% of the population belong to.  

The People vaccine alliance reported that only 1 of the 10 people are likely to get vaccinated till the end of this year in 70 developing countries, while the Global North which accounts only 14% of the worlds’ population, has procured 3 times more vaccines than they require and has acquired more than half i.e. 53% of the total anticipated vaccines. A Country like Canada has reserved enough vaccine to vaccinate its citizen 5 times over, and no one knows about what has been written in kismets of 67 poor countries. 

THE PREVALENCE OF PUBLIC HEALTH OVER PRIVATE PATENT IN THE LEGAL

FRAMEWORK 

E. Gold identifies three broad approaches to conceptualising the relationship between patent rights and human rights: 

• The “Integrated approach,” which positions patents as a human right.  

• The “Coexistence approach,” which contends that while patent law and human rights law are distinct, they share a fundamental concern in determining the optimal amount of patent protection needed to incentivize and practise socially useful innovation. 

• The “Subjugation approach,” which states that human rights considerations should prevail over patent law when patent rights and human rights conflicts 

The “Subjugation approach” seems to be a perfect way to determine the confrontational relationship of patents and public health. The aforesaid approach never means to abolish or obliterate all the patent rights; rather it establishes the necessity and the essentiality of the public health when it is confronted with patents. Unsurprisingly, this is the same thing the laws endorse for. 

There are many provisions in different conventions and declarations which confirm that the public health is always to be given priority when it is needed and indeed having an upper hand. 

Article 12 of The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) recognises “the right to the highest standard of physical and mental health and makes it a necessity for the state parties to prevent, to treat and to control epidemic, endemic, occupational, and other diseases.” While the Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) declares “a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family” to be a human right. 

The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement itself states in its Article 7 that the protection of intellectual property rights should go hand in hand with the socio-economic welfare. And a balance of rights and duties must be maintained.”And Article 8.1 of the same agreement references the same thing in a more lucid and strong manner giving all the rights the TRIPS members to take every step which as long as is for the protection of public health and is in accordance with the terms and condition of TRIPS agreement. 

The WTO ministerial conference also known as Doha declaration proved all the arguments of public health and private patents outlandish. And “Conclusively remarked”that intellectual property rights are undoubtedly crucial for the acceleration of the drugs and medicines. But its effects on the prices cannot be unforeseen. Which are undeniably an obstacle for the developing countries as the patents and the high medicine prices are correlated. The Doha declaration then recognized the issue   of public health and private patent and declared that the TRIPS agreement cannot restrict the signatories from taking measures to protect public health. And the agreement should be enforced in a manner that the public health could be protected along with access to medicine for all.  

It prioritised the considerations of public health and clarified that it does not only apply to certain selected provisions of TRIPS but extends over the whole of TRIPS agreement. The phrase “measures to protect public health”applies not only to medications, but also to vaccines, diagnostics, and other health resources required to make these items easier to use. Thus, the primacy of the public health can clearly be seen over private patent.  

People’s Vaccine:  The  Suggestion,  The  Solution. 

People’s Vaccine is critical for bringing the Covid-19 pandemic to an end. Because it can be mass-produced, distributed fairly, and made available to all people regardless of their status in all the countries. It can also enable the production of billions of additional doses in the shortest amount of time, ensuring availability and accessibility everywhere round the globe. 

To enforce People’s Vaccine, the government of all around the world should endeavour to 

• Support the idea put forward by India and South Africa to waive off some patent rules of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) 

• Protect public health by preventing monopolies on vaccine while making sure the sharing of “Know-How” and all the relevant information about the same 

• Allocate the vaccines  fairly to both developing and developed countries. As the discriminatory distribution of the same has already created a blatant gap  and hundreds of people are dying every day 

• Ensure the transparency in the process  

• Provide the vaccine for free or for a price that could be affordable by the very last member of the society 

The pharmaceutical companies argue that the suspension of intellectual property rights would put the kibosh on innovation and technology because they spend billions in the process of vaccine-making and take substantial risk. However, this is not the truth.  

First of all, suspending the intellectual property rights does not mean bulldozing the companies into loss. But to avail the vaccine at a Reasonable price considering the investments the companies have made. Now please don’t tell me that making an 80% profit margin is reasonable. Second, vaccine like Oxford-AstraZeneca is 97% publicly funded. And the governments have spent 93 billion. Which is people’s money, on corona vaccines. Thus, it is indeed a People’s Vaccine. 

CONCLUSION 

While addressing the World Health Assembly, Geneva. Mrs Indira Gandhi rightly delivered that “My idea of a better-ordered world is one in which medical discoveries would be free of patents and there would be no profiteering from life or death”. The monopolization of the vaccines has done nothing but subsequent denied drugs to poor people.  

We could stop up the pandemic way earlier. But the Patent on drugs and related products put up a Price Tag on human life right from the very beginning. Rapid Testing Kit’s patent took a very difficult test from the people in these testing times and made the pandemic last longer. The patent on the N95 mask made it difficult to take breath. I am frightened to hear the vaccine 1, Vaccine 2 and Vaccine 3 just like Covid wave 1, Covid wave 2 and so on……If all the people do not get vaccinated rapidly, quickly and speedily. The playing field is open to new strains that would continue to arise and would elude our current vaccines. Therefore, it’s  time for a new approach. This is important to realize our social and moral duty towards the society. The pharmaceutical companies must share their knowledge. Which is not really a new concept or something extremely out of the box. But this is how the flu vaccines are being dosed to the world by “Open Science” through the WHO’s  Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS) from the last 50 years. Same goes with Polio Vaccine, which was not patented by its inventor, Jonas Salk. In an interview when he was asked about the reason behind it. he replied. “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” The answer is NO