By Dr Arun Mitra
With the news that few cases of new Omicron variant which is said to have shorter incubation period and faster spread than the previous COVID infections is a matter of concern. However we have enough experience now from the past and should utilise that for prevention from COVID and promotion of good health. In the past even though a few scientists had predicted that Pandemics come and go every time and then. That time we had probably forgotten the Spanish Flu Pandemic nearly 100 years ago which had caused immense misery and millions of deaths.
That time the knowledge of medical science was not as advanced as we have now. Despite the warning of a few scientists the issue was not taken that much seriously. Therefore the world was ill prepared to meet such eventuality. There was lack of medicines, hospital staff, equipment as well as vaccines to prevent the COVID in future. As a result we faced several serious issues globally, but in our country the poor people were at receiving end. The governments all over tried to hide their data pertaining to COVID.
For example the Indian government said that 4 lakh people died but independent studies have pointed out the deaths to be between 25 to 40 lakhs. The government instead of treating it as health emergency brought in disaster act to tackle the situation. Totally un-thoughtful lockdown was suddenly imposed giving time of four hours only. This led to very precarious situation. People were suddenly left with no job, no means for livelihood and became shelter less. Poor workers decided to go to their village to live with their kith and kin. Instead of helping them the government stopped all the means of transport which forced them to walk hundreds of kilometres on foot, bicycles, carts and other personal/hired means of transport paying exorbitant amount.
On the way they were treated like criminals by the administration at many places. Several accidents took place in this biggest ever migration after the independence. Unfortunately none of the ministers or government officials uttered a word of sympathy for them. The economy came to a standstill. Workers’ trade unions demanded Rs.7500/- to be given to each family to enable them to have minimum food to eat. This could have also let the economy going to an extent. But the government gave only few kilograms of grain, daal and a bit of oil. The non-governmental organisations and religious institutions particularly Gurudwaras gave some respite to the people in the form of cooked or uncooked ration. The public sector health workers including the ASHA and Aanganwadi were in the forefront to the help of people even though they do not have work man status.
It is painful to note that the pharma companies made huge profits even during such a serious health catastrophe. Medicines, masks, sanitizers and other such equipment were sold at higher prices. Glaring inequity was observed in Healthcare and the vaccines between the developed and the developing countries. Smaller countries who were forced to procure vaccines from the big vaccine producing giants were blackmailed. Pointing out this Dr Samir Malhotra from PGI Chandigarh said that the COVID-19 scare forced many governments to enter into contracts with the companies developing vaccines.
Many of these contracts had confidentiality clauses according to which the company was exempted “from any civil liability for serious side effects arising from the use of the vaccine, indefinitely”. “Purchaser hereby agrees to indemnify, defend and hold harmless [the company and] each of their affiliates from and against any and all suits, claims, actions, demands, losses, damages, liabilities, settlements, penalties, fines, costs and expenses caused by, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the vaccine.” Not only that, and this is shocking, these countries were asked to “put up sovereign assets as collateral to guarantee indemnity”. Such assets could include embassy buildings, cultural assets, etc. We still remember the threat given by the then US President Trump to India if it did not supply Chloroquine to the US.
We expect such inequities not to happen in future but there is no guarantee to it. The companies have profit only as their motive. They justify high pricing of drugs because they have to spend on research. This claim of the Pharma industry that they have to bear high cost in developing new drugs as a justification for such high prices is totally flawed because virtually 100% of initial research leading to new drugs occurs with the support of public funding. A vaccine that requires a few dollars to manufacture brings in profits worth billions of dollars to the company.
To continue their exploitation the global powers brought in Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) under the various clauses of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) The situation at present demands a complete revamping of such clauses which prohibit the developing countries from manufacturing cheap medicines/vaccines. The clause of compulsory licensing should be made simple in favour of the developing countries without long debates specially when we are in serious health crisis worldwide due to Pandemic. For our country it is all the more important to rejuvenate and strengthen our own public sector pharmaceutical industry with a purpose to produce cheap drugs/vaccines for local and global supply. We have national emergencies for several diseases, communicable as well as non-communicable.
It is all more important to avoid unscientific ideas like the use of cow urine and cow dung to treat Corona infection. False hopes can be counterproductive. The Prime Minister in his speech in March 2020 had said that we will defeat corona in 21 days. Such unscientific utterings do not help. In case of health emergency let the health science prevail. (IPA Service)
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