It’s probably true to say that the one thing the entire world has collectively been thinking about in the last year is Covid and the vaccines that will defeat the infection.
Although some countries in Africa have done well at getting their citizens the jab, Africa remains the least vaccinated continent.
Rhoda Odhiambo is the BBC’s African health correspondent. She says so-called vaccine nationalism is to blame and even if countries believe they are taking care of their own populations, “a country cannot declare itself safe if the world is not clear of coronavirus.”
Lately, there’s been a lot of discussion about what difference could be made to the situation if the big pharmaceutical companies waived their intellectual property rights on their vaccines – allowing countries to copy and produce the formula cheaply.
Catherine Kyobutungi is a Ugandan epidemiologist and Executive Director of the African Population and Health Research Centre. She told us many things need to be considered and that “one school of thought is that intellectual property waivers should be accompanied by voluntary technology transfer”.
She says otherwise it would be like getting “the ingredients but not the recipe.”
So, there’s an argument for both intellectual property waivers.
Source: BBC
