Mr. Dimitri Eynikel:

I agree that we cannot have a pandemic response based solely on donations. It is just not a feasible model. We need a stronger and more effective model. I want to go back to the principle that we are discussing here, which is basically to provide governments with the tools available to protect their populations in the middle of a pandemic. It is about telling them that they have the freedom to operate and produce the tools they need to protect their people. I hear, from the industry side, that there is a change of rules. Let us go back for a moment. What happened 20 years ago was that patent rights could be overruled with compulsory licensing. That principle was already there. As Professor McMahon explained, it was there in the Doha declaration and the TRIPS agreement. What happened afterwards was that the industry started to push for other tools to protect its intellectual property, by protecting the data related to the products and protecting the trade secrets on how to produce certain complex products etc., in addition to the patents, which was not so much the case 20 years ago. There was a change in the rules that happened over those 20 years, with additional protections. These are exactly the barriers we are discussing today with the TRIPS waiver. We are saying that compulsory licensing is a valuable tool, but it falls short because there are other elements that have been added over the course of the 20 years that make it more and more difficult to reproduce some of these medicines when they are needed. That is where a waiver for a certain period of time will cut through the red tape. Countries will be able to produce and supply the medicines, and import and export any tools and raw materials as well. The issue of raw materials has been brought up. It also falls under the same category. The waiver will resolve the raw materials issue as well.