International organisations call on UK government to prevent Big Pharma profiteering from COVID-19

The open letter is signed by more than 20 organisations, including Global Justice Now, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Access Campaign, MSF UK, Oxfam GB and Save the Children UK [1]. In it, the group commends the government’s £250 million-plus research funding for a COVID-19 vaccine, but warns that without safeguards Big Pharma could monopolise access to any resulting drugs, setting a price unaffordably high, and preventing billions of people from receiving it. 

The letter calls on the UK government to guarantee equitable access to any new drug by imposing strict public interest conditions on all UK funding, as well as supporting a proposal from the President of Costa Rica for a ‘global patent pool’ [2]. This would allow all technologies designed for the detection, prevention, control and treatment of COVID-19 to be openly available, making it impossible for any one company or country to monopolise them.

The signing organisations and academics also call on the UK government to use its powers to override patents on any technologies that are potentially useful for tackling COVID-19, a step already being considered by governments including Germany, Chile and Ecuador. 

Although essential medicines, like a potential vaccine for COVID-19, are regularly developed with huge amounts of public funding, corporations manufacture the final medicines and claim intellectual property protection over them, allowing them to charge whatever price they want. This prevents huge numbers of people from accessing vital medicines, and adds substantially to the costs of public healthcare systems that must purchase them, including the NHS. It also prevents collaboration in the research of medicines, as businesses are not transparent in their development of drugs. 

Vickie Hawkins, Executive Director of MSF UK: 

“The UK is putting millions of pounds of public money into global efforts to finding a vaccine for COVID-19. This money cannot be handed to pharmaceutical companies with no strings attached. Conditions must be added to these funds to ensure that there are no patents or profiteering on any future COVID-19 vaccine. 

“We know from our past experiences all over the world what it means not to have the right medical tools to save people's lives. Any successful vaccine resulting from public funding must not be limited to commercial interests and has to be made available to all during this pandemic. We have to stop putting the economic interests of pharmaceutical companies above people’s health. This needs to start now."

Nick Dearden, Director of Global Justice Now: 

“COVID-19 is a global problem. Everyone in the world needs to be able to benefit from a vaccine when it’s developed, otherwise we will not contain this disease and it will recur. Sadly, the current pharmaceutical system is not fit for purpose, and unless governments take action there’s every chance that the drugs we develop will not be affordable to people across the world. Today, we’re telling the UK government to put strict conditions on its research funding, ensuring that when a COVID-19 vaccine is produced, it is available to all. We cannot allow the profits from this vaccine to line the pockets of Big Pharma’s shareholders while billions of people are unable to benefit from it.” 

NOTES
 [1] The open letter is available at http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/covid-uk-letter and attached below. Full signatories are:

• Global Justice Now
• STOPAIDS
• Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Access Campaign and MSF UK
• Oxfam 
• Save the Children UK
• CAFOD
• Health Poverty Action
• Universities Allied for Essential Medicines 
• RESULTS UK   
• TranspariMED
• We Own It
• Just Treatment
• Transparency International Health Initiative
• Primary Care International
• Frontline AIDS
• Equality Trust
• Youth Stop AIDS
• Salamander Trust
• People’s Health Movement UK
• Medact Students for Global Health 
• ACT UP London
• PrEPster 
• Professor Francesco Checchi, Professor of Epidemiology & International Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
• Dr. Andrew Hill, Senior Visiting Research Fellow, University of Liverpool
• Dr. Mohga Kamal-Yanni MPhil. MBE, Global Health and Access to Medicines Consultant

[2] Regarding the Costa Rica proposal, see ‘WHO is asked to create a voluntary intellectual property pool to develop Covid-19 products’: https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2020/03/24/covid19-coronavirus-costa-rica-intellectual-property/