A woman gets a shot of the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine at the Universidad Publica de El Alto, during a vaccination drive for people over age 60 in El Alto, Bolivia, on May 6, 2021.A top official of the World Trade Organization says he welcomes a landmark decision by the Bolivian government to seek a compulsory licence for a Canadian company to produce and export COVID-19 vaccines without the permission of the patent holder.
The Bolivian government decision to seek a compulsory licence for the Canadian company Biolyse Pharma is “a very welcome step and one that may perhaps pave the way for other [WTO] members to make use of the system,” said Antony Taubman, director of the WTO’s intellectual property division, at the signing ceremony on Tuesday.
“The economy should be in the service of life, and not the other way around,” he told the signing ceremony in La Paz. The World Health Organization warned this week that high-income and upper-middle-income countries have received 83 per cent of the world’s COVID-19 vaccines so far, despite representing only 53 per cent of the world’s population. Low-income and lower-middle-income countries have received just 17 per cent of the world’s vaccines, it said.