Dr. Christine Kelly:

I am not trying to minimise the fact that there are a lot of challenges. I worked in Malawi for four years and I have seen fantastic vaccine roll-out programmes. If there is one thing a lot of countries in low-income scenarios are very good at, it is rolling out vaccines. We have to be very careful about looking down on countries and saying that are not able to do this, because a lot of the time they are able, but it is about equipment and supplies issues.

The TRIPS waiver would help with the autonomy of a country to be able to decide what vaccines it will introduced and how it will do that. For me, that is the big issues as a clinician. I want to be able to decide what I am supplying based on evidence, not based on the leftovers or whatever is being given to me. The essential point of the TRIPS waiver is clinical autonomy, as well as diversity of production and being able to produce the vaccine within the contingent for the continent, and for it not to be exported.