![]() Interfarma’s implied threat against such a measure underscores a dynamic that public health advocates say is particularly pernicious during a pandemic: Countries that run afoul of drug companies by supporting measures to override patents risk facing the wrath of an industry that has the power to decide whether a huge swath of their population lives or dies.ĭomestic efforts to start compulsory licensing aren’t the only way patents are being challenged: Global South countries are also leading an effort at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to suspend key international patent rules to enable the mass production of cheaper, generic vaccines. (A compulsory licensing bill has passed Brazil’s Senate but has not yet officially been signed into law.) Some countries hope to find relief in compulsory licensing, when a government allows the production of a vaccine without the consent of a patent owner, a move floated in Brazil as a way to urgently expand vaccine access while the pandemic rages. The country’s outbreak has been so severe and uncontrolled that it’s spawned the Gamma variant, which has since spread around the world. The trade group’s spokesperson made the remarks at a time when Brazil was pushed to the point of desperation: The same day the article was published, more than 71, 000 new Covid- 19 cases were reported in Brazil. Interfarma represents Pfizer, Gilead, AstraZeneca and other major pharmaceutical companies. “The demand is much bigger than the supply, and they may find it more advantageous from an economic point of view to sell to countries that do not break patents.” “This is not retaliation,” she proclaimed. In an interview with Folha de São Paulo, the most widely-read newspaper in Brazil, de Carvalhaes declared that if the South American country were to green-light compulsory licensing to expand access to Covid- 19 vaccines, pharmaceutical companies might respond by withholding supply of the vaccines. On April 24, Elizabeth de Carvalhaes, executive president of the Brazilian pharmaceutical company trade group Interfarma, said out loud what the drug industry had up until then avoided uttering in public. ![]()
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