-The Indian Express Innovation in vaccine production can have an impact only if it is accessible to all. Patents and access to life-saving drugs has always been an emotive and contentious issue. The right to healthy life is a moral minimum, and to find a rational basis to deny it is deeply offensive to the idea of life itself. At the same time, pharma corporations and institutions claim patents are a just...
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Fight Covid with compulsory licensing -Amitendu Palit
-Financial Express If patents continue to determine global access to vaccines and drugs, then fighting Covid-19 will remain a distant dream for most countries Vaccines are badly required by the world, as are drugs like Remdesivir and Tocilizumab, and medical equipment like ventilators and oxygen concentrators. A large number of countries, particularly low- and middle-income ones, are struggling to access vaccines, drugs and equipment. There cannot be a more important occasion than the...
More »Vaccines: The Centre and states should divide tasks -Arjun Jayadev & Avinash Tripathi
-Hindustan Times A rapid and universal vaccination programme is essential to control a surge of this magnitude and time is of the essence — for the virus is not standing still The second wave of Covid-19 is overwhelming India. The official death toll is already inching towards 250,000, but this is almost surely a vast underestimate, as the virus sweeps through rural India and kills many whose deaths will never be captured...
More »India learns a bitter lesson for disregarding crucial warnings and recommendations on Covid-19
In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few. Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...
More »Narendra Modi speaks to Joe Biden over phone amid surge in cases -Nistula Hebbar
-The Hindu A statement issued by the PMO stated that Mr. Modi discussed India’s initiative at the WTO for relaxation in TRIPS agreement Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Joe Biden had a telephone conversation on Monday with assurances exchanged on smoothening out issues related to supply chains for vaccines for COVID-19 and the latter affirming that the U.S. would be supporting India’s efforts to come to grips with the massive...
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