African Union backs call to waive IP rights on COVID-19 drugs

African Union backs call to waive IP rights on COVID-19 drugs

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The African Union is backing calls for drugmakers to waive some intellectual property rights on COVID-19 medicines and vaccines to speed up their rollout to poor countries, the head of its disease control body said on Thursday.

South Africa and India, which both manufacture drugs and vaccines, made the proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) last year, arguing that intellectual property (IP) rules were hindering the urgent scale-up of vaccine production and provision of medical products to some patients.

They have faced opposition from some developed nations, but the backing of the African Union (AU) may give renewed impetus for the push to relax IP rules.

John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news conference that IP transfer was a "win-win for everybody“ that would address the huge inequalities in global public health.

He gave two examples where the developing world had suffered because of restricted access to medicines: the swine flu pandemic in the late 2000s and HIV/AIDS in the 1990s.

"In 1996, HIV drugs were available, and we saw how mortality in the developed world decreased drastically. But it would take 10 years before those drugs were accessible in Africa in any