On the front line of India's coronavirus fight, vaccines are among its most potent weapons. India and South Africa are set to press the issue when the World Trade Organization's General Council meets. They've asked the WTO to intervene and waive the patents, or intellectual property, on coronavirus vaccines.
Dilan Thampapillai is a Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University.
"So we really are in a very unusual situation where on the one hand, we do have the vaccines that could actually be effective in slowing the pandemic. But on the other hand, we've got this international trading system, which really slows horrifically the use of those vaccines, simply because of the costs around it and the legal rules, that if you try to replicate the vaccines now, you'd be infringing. So we are in a very unprecedented situation."
If the patents are waived by the World Trade Organisation, the firms developing them would no longer have exclusive control over the vaccine and how it is produced.
Other manufacturers would be able to produce doses, which could be sold to developing countries at a significantly lower cost.
Ugur Sahin, the CEO of BioNTech which makes the Pfizer Vaccine, warned last week waiving intellectual property may lead to poo- quality versions of the vaccine being used in developing countries.
"It is not a solution to simply hand over the patent right now because the worst thing that can happen is that then a proliferation takes place. I think the question was asked: Is the vaccine in Iraq the same as the one used in Europe? - and that is actually the most important question. We don't want to have poor quality vaccine in Africa."
Click on the player at the top of the page to listen to this audio in Punjabi.
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