{"id":107960,"date":"2021-02-25T11:43:21","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T11:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/?p=107960"},"modified":"2021-02-25T11:43:21","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T11:43:21","slug":"african-union-backs-call-to-waive-ip-rights-on-covid-19-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/markets\/african-union-backs-call-to-waive-ip-rights-on-covid-19-drugs\/","title":{"rendered":"African Union backs call to waive IP rights on COVID-19 drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; The African Union is backing calls for drugmakers to waive some intellectual property rights on COVID-19 medicines and vaccines to speed up their rollout to poor countries, the head of its disease control body said on Thursday.<\/p><figcaption>FILE PHOTO: John Nkengasong, Africa&#8217;s Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), speaks during an interview with Reuters at the African Union (AU) Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 11, 2020. Picture taken March 11, 2020. REUTERS\/Tiksa Negeri<\/figcaption><p>South Africa and India, which both manufacture drugs and vaccines, made the proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) last year, arguing that intellectual property (IP) rules were hindering the urgent scale-up of vaccine production and provision of medical products to some patients.<\/p>\n<p>They have faced opposition from some developed nations, but the backing of the African Union (AU) may give renewed impetus for the push to relax IP rules.<\/p>\n<p>John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news conference that IP transfer was a \u201cwin-win for everybody\u201d that would address the huge inequalities in global public health.<\/p>\n<p>He gave two examples where the developing world had suffered because of restricted access to medicines: the swine flu pandemic in the late 2000s and HIV\/AIDS in the 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn 1996, HIV drugs were available, and we saw how mortality in the developed world decreased drastically. But it would take 10 years before those drugs were accessible in Africa in any meaningful way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn between, 12 million Africans died, so I just use those numbers to say: any IP transfer will be beneficial to everybody, because nobody wants to sit back and be proud of that sad event &#8230; We want to be on the right side of history.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nkengasong added the Africa CDC\u2019s regulatory taskforce had approved two versions of AstraZeneca\u2019s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, a day after Ghana received its first AstraZeneca doses from global vaccine distribution facility COVAX.<\/p>\n<p>He said the developers of Russia\u2019s Sputnik V vaccine had submitted a \u201cfull dossier\u201d of data to the Africa CDC and that in the coming days an expert panel would review the data and make a pronouncement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have not received dossiers yet from China colleagues, but we remain optimistic that they will submit to us,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n<p>Several countries on the continent, including Egypt, Zimbabwe and Senegal, have already started rolling out Chinese COVID-19 shots.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-health-coronavirus-africa\/african-union-backs-call-to-waive-ip-rights-on-covid-19-drugs-idUSKBN2AP1CP\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; The African Union is backing calls for drugmakers to waive some intellectual property rights on COVID-19 medicines and vaccines to speed up [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":107959,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>African Union backs call to waive IP rights on COVID-19 drugs - Fin2me<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/markets\/african-union-backs-call-to-waive-ip-rights-on-covid-19-drugs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"African Union backs call to waive IP rights on COVID-19 drugs - Fin2me\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; 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