Vaccine must not be patented: Muhammad Yunus

HYDERABAD: Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus on Thursday said that Covid-19 vaccine makers must follow the example of Jonas Salk, who did not patent the polio vaccine for the greater good of humankind.
“Declare the Covid vaccine as a ‘global common good’ and no one must hold patents or rights over it. And once the vaccine is developed, it should be allowed to be manufactured locally and in any part of the world and there should not be any corporate control or commercial control over the intellectual property (IP) of these vaccines,” he said while addressing participants virtually at the TiE Global Summit-2020 here on Thursday.

Yunus said that as the race for vaccine development intensifies, the rich ones have already started controlling capacities and many rich nations are booking more Covid vaccines. He pointed out that 10% of the people in the world, who are living in the rich countries, have booked a majority of the vaccine supplies as a result of which a majority of the world population will find it difficult to access vaccines in 2021.
In fact, Oxfam had warned in September that wealthy nations representing just 13% of the world’s population have already cornered more than half (51%) of the promised doses of leading Covid-19 vaccine candidates. Yunus, who is also known as the father of microfinance, said the pandemic has given us an opportunity to build a better world which cares for natural resources, does not allow concentration of wealth in the hands of a few and offers employment opportunities for all the people.
“We humans are the most endangered species. We know our home is burning and we don’t care. It is time to change-…it is time for a world of three zeros: zero carbon emissions, zero wealth concentration and zero unemployment,” he said. He said that over 90% of the wealth is concentrated with 1% of the population. He also cautioned about the negative impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on jobs and said it will replace humans in many jobs in the coming years.
“Vaccine itself has shown how ridiculous the world is... we are just beginning to create vaccine haves and vaccine have nots. We are appealing to the world to declare corona vaccine as the global public good...so that there is no patent right over the vaccine,” he said.