The president of the International Federation of Societies of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC), Francesco Rocca, affirmed today that the agreement in the World Trade Organization (WTO) to Suspend patents on anticovid vaccines in developing countries "arrives late and falls short".
"It is not the result we expected, because we wanted more"said Rocca at a press conference after his re-election as president of the IFRC, in which he stressed that the agreement within the WTO "it is a missed opportunity, because more should be done to reduce inequality".
This agreement, signed last week at the end of the XII Ministerial Conference of the WTO, suspends patents for anticovid vaccines for five yearsbut not those of treatments and diagnoses, as the promoters of the agreement (India and South Africa) had requested with the support of dozens of developing countries.
"Negotiating something that should be obvious, access to vaccines, treatments and tests for a lethal disease, is very difficult to accept, for me it is an insult"Rocca assured.
"When human life is at stake, a negotiation should not be so complex or drag on for years"Rocca concluded regarding a debate in the WTO that has taken 20 months to resolve.
The re-elected president of the Federation He also said that he felt "frustrated" knowing the conditions in which the heads of national Red Cross societies in many developing countries are forced to respond to the pandemic.
