When humanity must overcome policies and economy?

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