Author: Biswajit Dhar, Jawaharlal Nehru University
For more than two decades, India has earned a reputation for being the ‘pharmacy of the world’ thanks to its strong generic pharmaceutical industry, which delivers affordable and quality medicines to the global market. Medical exports from India have grown from around US $ 1 billion at the beginning of the century to over US $ 20 billion in 2019–20.
Indian companies carried out emergency interventions during the HIV / AIDS pandemic by supplying antiretroviral medicines at an affordable price to African countries, where major drug manufacturers demanded too high prices. Following the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in shape as a multi-stakeholder campaign to reduce the burden of these diseases, India’s sex drug industry emerged as one of the largest suppliers. greater.
India has emerged as a major supplier of COVID-19 vaccines. India has a partnership with the Serum Institute of India (SII), the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world by number of doses. In June 2020, SII entered into a licensing agreement with the British-Swedish biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to deliver one billion doses of Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine to middle- and low-income countries, bringing into India. SII is currently administering its Covishield vaccine to the Indian government. Prior to this, another Indian biopharmaceutical company, Bharat Biotech International Limited, together with the Medical Research Council of India, started developing the COVID-19 vaccine, ‘Covaxin’.
While planning the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, the Indian government announced a detailed ‘vaccine diplomacy’ strategy for vaccinating most of its neighbors and other developing countries. Neighbors of India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka will benefit from vaccine supply as part of India’s development cooperation initiative. Afghanistan, the Seychelles, Myanmar and Mauritius are also expected to benefit. In South Asia, where China’s presence has grown in recent years, India’s ‘vaccine diplomacy’ could help take over the playing field.
India has agreed to deliver 10 million doses of vaccine to Africa and a million to DA health workers under the COVID-19 Global Access Vaccines (COVAX) facility coordinated by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Vaccination (GAVI).
Several other countries, including Mongolia, Oman, the Philippines, Bahrain, and the Dominican Republic could be included in India’s ‘vaccine assistance’ program. India is using its soft power to help developing countries, a role it has increasingly seen as a development partner.
The government has approved the export of commercial vaccines to countries seeking them, imposing an embargo on the commercial sale of vaccines in India. Brazil and South Africa benefit from this, including millions of doses of Covishield.
India’s vaccine distribution policy stands out with the alarming rise in ‘vaccine nationality’. According to the Duke University Institute of Global Health, a group of advanced countries, which make up just 16 percent of the world’s population, have acquired 60 percent of the global vaccine products for themselves. Canada tops the list of ‘vaccine nationals’, having received a vaccine supply of nearly ten times the population, while the United States has stored enough doses to give the vaccine to every citizen over six hours. Other countries receiving vaccine supplies far beyond their domestic requirements are Australia, Chile, the United Kingdom, and members of the European Union. But India shares the available vaccine sources with several countries, while also ensuring that domestic demand is met.
Unsurprisingly, global vaccine supply has been severely affected, with every country trying to overcome the crisis caused by a pandemic. Several studies warn that low vaccine availability, especially for smaller countries, will extend recovery and trigger a dramatic increase in global inequality. Rand Corporation’s study has concluded that if low- and middle-income countries (LLMICs) cannot afford to adequately vaccinate their populations, high-income countries will be severely affected. high input (HIC). The total cumulative economic cost of 30 HICs could increase from US $ 82 billion in 2020–2021 to US $ 258 billion in 2023–2024. The United States could attract the highest relative cost, of US $ 15.7 billion in 2020–2021, rising to US $ 49.3 billion in 2023–2024.
A recent study commissioned by the International Chamber of Commerce maintains that the fair distribution of vaccines is for the economic interest of all countries, especially those heavily dependent on trade. If all HIC vaccination numbers by mid-2021 and LLMICs are largely excluded, the global economy could lose up to US $ 9 trillion, which is more than Japan’s total GDP and Germany.
In October 2020, India and South Africa took the initiative to ensure the accessibility and accessibility of COVID-19-related vaccines, medicines and products through a recommendation in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Both countries, and nine other countries that have supported them since, have argued for the granting of claims from pledges to implement or enforce four types of intellectual property rights, so that the results and These essential technologies are widely available.
India’s efforts to make vaccines widely available to developing countries, coupled with growing evidence of the benefits of making COVID-19 vaccines accessible, suggest that, during a disease outbreak. -distributed, medical products treated as global public goods.
Biswajit Dhar is a Professor at the Center for Economic Science and Design School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University.