Pope Francis, warned against ”nationalism“ on the issue of vaccines and called for the suspension of patents for coronavirus vaccines to make them more accessible.
According to the Vatican News, he said this in an address to the participants of the concert organized in support of the fair distribution of vaccines.
The Pope in his speech mentioned the “virus of individualism”, which makes people indifferent to the suffering of others.
“One of the variants of this virus is closed nationalism, which interferes, for example, with the internationalism of vaccinations. Another option is that we put the laws of the market and intellectual property above the laws of love and the health of humanity, “ the pontiff said.
Earlier, the United States supported the initiative of more than 100 member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to temporarily suspend patents for coronavirus vaccines.
The European Union has said it is ready to discuss the US proposal.
At the same time, the German government supports the preservation of patents for coronavirus vaccines, and the French president said that the United States and the United Kingdom should “stop blocking” vaccines and the components from which they are made.
Removing patent protection could allow poor countries to mass-produce drugs that are synonymous with patented vaccines. Critics of the idea point out that this may deprive development companies of the motivation to invest in innovation, and also that the shortage of vaccines is not so much due to patents as to difficulties in supplying components for the production of drugs.
