Nursing unions from 28 countries have called on the United Nations to support a temporary waiver on patents for COVID-19 vaccines, and warned of a “crisis of global vaccine apartheid” that could lead to more new variants like Omicron and Delta spreading around the world. In a letter sent on Monday, the unions accused the European Union, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway and Singapore of “protecting the profits of big pharmaceutical companies at the expense of public health,” by opposing the so-called TRIPS waiver backed by around 100 nations.
As of late September this year, 73% of the world’s COVID-19 vaccines had been given in just ten countries, the letter said, adding that rich countries had obtained 7 billion doses of the vaccines. That compares to just 300 million doses available to people in low-income nations.
The unions, which represent around 2.5 million healthcare workers worldwide, urged the UN’s special rapporteur on physical and mental health, South African doctor Tlaleng Mokofeng, to take action on what it called “the crimes of the governments of some of the world’s richest countries.”
In October 2020, South Africa and India began to press the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to approve a waiver of parts of the multinational Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, in order to improve access to vaccines in poorer countries. Supporters of the proposal at the WTO argue that a waiver would temporarily lift the patents on the world’s COVID-19 vaccines, making them easier and cheaper to produce.
