蜜芽传媒

The director general of the World Trade Organization says a series of trade deals has been struck during marathon talks in Geneva. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said there had been new agreements on fishing subsidies, food security and waiving patents for coronavirus vaccines. In an early morning news conference Ms Okonjo-Iweala said it demonstrated that the WTO was capable of responding to the emergencies of our time, adding that the deal would make a difference to the lives of people around the world.

But not everyone is so impressed. For Achal Prabhala in Bangalore, India the deal on covid is 鈥渋nadequate and incomplete and far too late鈥�. He's a public health activist and proponent of no patents on Covid vaccines and also Coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines in India, Brazil and South Africa.

鈥淟ess than 25 per cent of [countries on] the African continent has been vaccinated, on average. Almost no country outside of the richest has access to the newest drugs. So we have a range of treatments, very few of which are available in the poorest parts of the world. This deal does nothing for poorest countries to detect and diagnose. It鈥檚 a tiny part of the monopoly problem that they鈥檝e addressed and that's why it's inadequate.鈥�

(Pic: World Trade Organization meeting; Credit: Reuters)

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