The President of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, has urged this Thursday, before the full Committee of the Regions, the European Union to review the current patent system to achieve rapid universal vaccination. The politician also calls for Europe to guarantee “compliance with delivery commitments by pharmaceutical companies” and asks that they collaborate with each other to speed up the production of doses. The community body endorses Puig’s initiative and will include it in the resolution that will be approved throughout the morning, according to sources in the autonomous community.
Puig, in a telematic intervention, has verified that until this entire globalized world is not protected “there is a latent bomb of possible mutations”. The Valencian politician has applauded the change of position of the United States that now supports releasing the patents temporarily and has stressed that the Valencian Community already claimed it on April 2. A request that they also support, has highlighted the Valencian politician, more than 60 former heads of state and a hundred Nobel laureates.
Puig defended his initiative the same day that the president of the United States, Joe Biden, spoke in favor of the liberalization of patents and that the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was willing to discuss the proposal of the United States to release patents for vaccines against covid-19, but considers that, in the short term, the most urgent thing is that the producing countries allow the export of doses.
The Valencian president recalled that the covid virus has already killed more than three million people around the world in a single year, “as many deaths as the battles of Verdun and Stalingrad together” and has caused “illness and immense pain ”And“ the greatest economic crisis after the Second World War ”. He questioned this situation “we can wait, see the images of India burning corpses and stay waiting.” “Waiting is not an option,” he stressed. In this sense, it has demanded a “rapid and exceptional response to an exceptional situation.”
The Valencian president has asked the European regions to “position themselves” against three dangers: the nationalism of vaccines, the commercialism of vaccines and the paralysis of the bureaucracy and has urged Europe to “guarantee compliance with the delivery commitments of Big Pharma ”. And he has been satisfied that the arrival of vaccines is increasing but has warned that “the ups and downs and the uncertainty they generate must end” and for this the EU “must arbitrate all the necessary mechanisms to ensure solutions to the stable delivery of vaccines ”.
In the same way, it has verified that to overcome the pandemic a greater capacity for the manufacture and distribution of vaccines is required and for this it asks the CoR to “consider all the options”. In this sense, it has supported suspending patents temporarily and arbitrating financial compensation formulas for laboratories because it is “an ethical and more efficient obligation that protects research in the face of the next pandemic.”
Puig has claimed to demand cooperation between pharmaceutical companies to increase production: “It is essential that the community institutions intensify this route to the maximum and that it is not a voluntary issue between companies”; and he has warned that this pandemic is not over yet and billions of vaccines will be needed annually for the entire world population and it is necessary to be convinced that in this globalized world “no one will be safe until we are all safe.”
In this sense, he has argued that “neither the bureaucracy nor the interest of large corporations can be the obstacle to achieving a higher objective such as a rapid universal vaccination that is today the great challenge.” “We cannot reverse what happened in the past on the battlefields of Stalingrad and Verdun, but we do have time to alleviate this human drama,” he added.
The Committee of Regions has taken up the initiative of the Valencian president and will include in the resolution that is expected to be approved throughout the morning that “in order to increase the production of vaccines, the European Union could explore new solutions, such as the suspension temporary patent on medicines and medical technologies for the treatment or prevention of covid-19 ″, includes the resolution.