Nothing new on the COVID-19 menace. All of us is known that the problem is present. I’m writing from my position as Professor in Colombia, a third world country with several problems in the past, in the present and in the future.
Here, the
impact of COVID-19 is yet to come. This is perhaps one of the few good things
about being in the third world. Everything comes late, development, but also
some diseases. Would this mean that we are in better shape to tackle the
pandemic? No. We see what is happening in the developed world and we can do
nothing but worry very much of our level of preparedness for this.
Nevertheless, the race against COVID-19 is a global one and runs in many fields
at the same time.
For
instance, there is a very basic race for facemasks to protect people from
contagion, and it is becoming a nasty one. There is another race running for
ventilators. In many places, R&D teams are working insanely for easy and
quick craft, economic and reliable ventilators that would help save lives. Just
to understand the race, the New York Mayor said last week that if they don’t
get the ventilators they’ve needed, by the end of the week many people will
die. And this is New York City. Think about other major cities with far less
preparedness for such a problem, like Bogotá, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, just to
name three. Another race is the one running to find effective treatments for
the disease. Medicaments basically are in process of development and test to
help in this matter. The final race, however, is the cure, the vaccine. There
the effort has been huge in this case, and cooperation between teams around the
world has shown that this is the best way to do it fast and secure.
With some
pathetic nuance around this problem, the mayor of a less than a middle city in
Colombia had the initiative of finding the cure to coronavirus and intended to
invest some of the available COVID-related budgets to such a purpose.
Scientists rapidly told him that that was out of the question and that that
money should be directed to something more realistic given the stage of
development, the human and material resources available in the country, for the
city is not even near to what is needed to develop such idea. Candid enough,
the Mayor’s idea shown a real problem. Of the five races mentioned above, there
are some easy to run. Masks can be made. Ventilators are not an easy craft but
they are not new at all. The pace in
these two races depends on, again, the capacity to produce and distribute. While
the American car companies are producing ventilators, Colombia needs to import
them, or wait for local production to massify which is not possible, even
though there are some developments from universities in creating easy ones to
produce.
What
happens with the development of new drugs? What will happen with the vaccine?
Will it reach our third world countries as late as the virus itself had
arrived? What will that mean in terms of lives lost?
This is
very important as far as it will be determined by the decision of whether or
not patent or impose intellectual property rights to such developments. In
general terms, IP’s purpose is to promote the development of creativity and the
capacity of humans to improve their lives through the creation of rewards to
those that invest time, creativity and money in such developments. But that is
not what should be expected in the case of the developments against COVID-19.
There is a superior interest that must overcome the mere reward interest. Is
the protection of human (as a whole, not as individuals) health.
Some people
have had indicated that the race for the cure, for the drugs, has become a
geopolitical one. That China and the US are racing. So if one has it, it will
use it as leverage against the other. We have heard of some worrying news
regarding a cargo ship been made off course in favour of one country. Either
humanity prevails or the individualistic interests will. Politics in the last
decade have shown the increase of right-wing individualistic interests rising.
In the
international arena, there are many countries still placed in the direction of
protecting the common interests rather than the individualistic ones. People
need to be aware of this.
The
pandemic has shown something that must be taken into consideration. It does not
matter where you are, our interconnected world will be affected as a whole if
any part of it has been left behind. Health issues such as this have shown that
human health cannot be treated like merchandise.
Consequently,
humanitarian thoughts should prevail over economic ones. There is no question.
The economy serves humanity, not in the other way. The international community
should demand and even pressure, if needed, to free any property rights that
exists on health products, procedures, drugs, etc, existent, under development,
or to be developed in the future, required for the treatment of the disease.
And if we learn something about this global problem, that should become a
policy from now that at least if a pandemic is declared the immediate effect
should be to lift all proprietary interests for the prevalence of human health.
If the argument then is that no one will produce those things as it lacks
incentive. Well, then, there is no humanity.
David
Felipe Alvarez, PhD
University
of Tolima
