Germany supports voluntary licencing to end vaccine inequity
Rajeev Choudhury
Germany supports voluntary licensing as part of patent pools to further expand the worldwide production capacity of vaccines to end the inequity in vaccine supply in the developing countries, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development Svenja Schulze, said in Geneva recently.
“Whole question of patents and waiver remains under discussion worldwide and the German Government supports voluntary licensing as part of patent pools, e.g. medicines patent pool so as to further expand the worldwide production capacity,” she said while replying to a question from the media.
Adding that the patent protection encourages innovation and led to the development of these vaccines the minister pointed out that the world will need further innovations in order to deal with further variants of COVID19 and many other diseases.
“We know from Germany that it is not enough just to pass on the patent, what we need is cooperation and knowledge transfer,” she insisted.
Admitting that organising the scaling up of the production of vaccines is a great challenge, she said that currently what is needed is scaling up production in the developing countries themselves and ensuring that these vaccines are actually administered.
Stating that the quickest way to achieve scaling up of vaccine production is through technology transfer the minister said, “What we need at the moment is for this new mRNA technology that the production of vaccines takes place respectfully across the world and that it takes place where the vaccines are needed most urgently in the developing countries.”
Briefing about other initiatives of the German Government in vaccine administration in the developing countries, she added that Germany is helping to establish cold chains and ensuring that the whole infrastructure that is needed for vaccination programmes is actually in place on the ground.
“It is not enough to just supply vaccines and hope that the countries will manage to administer these vaccines,” she said.
“We need a different path, we need vaccine production across the world, and that is what we from Germany want to support and what the European Union supports and what the G7 has also resolved to do and that is what we want to continue with G7,” she added.