GLOBAL CALL TO ACTION:
Governments Must Break Big Pharma-WTO Stranglehold on Access to Medicine by Taking Immediate Action to Prioritize Human Lives Over Pharmaceutical Monopolies
More than two years into a pandemic that has killed 15 million people, World Trade Organization intellectual property barriers shamefully remain a deadly obstruction limiting global access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests & treatments. A few wealthy countries promoting pharmaceutical corporation interests have been able to block the use of the WTO’s waiver mechanism to temporarily suspend such barriers despite more than 100 WTO member countries supporting a waiver. The WTO’s notoriously exclusionary, oppressive processes have been deployed instead to force through a sham text that will not improve global access to COVID-19 medicines because it not only fails to remove IP obstacles but outrageously adds further constraints to existing WTO flexibilities for medicines production. This outrageous situation underscores that governments must take immediate actions to bypass the WTO’s prioritization of pharmaceutical monopolies over human lives.