Bharat Biotech Vaccine
Fair Pharma Scorecard
Applying human rights to pharma
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The company should publicly commit to human rights in relation to product development and marketing, by adopting an official human rights policy statement recognising the right to the highest attainable standard of health. The company should endeavour to integrate human rights into its strategies, policies, programmes, projects, and activities.
The company should also have a publicly available global access plan for their Covid-19 product, based on human rights standards, with measurable targets and lines of accountability.
Texas Children’s CVD claims to have developed the first low-cost Covid-19 vaccine designed for global access. It has also signed a non-exclusive license with Biological E Limited (Bio E) to license the Covid-19 vaccine. It has also stated that it would not patent the vaccine in order to make it available to all manufacturers globally.
Texas Children’s does not mention human rights on its website.
The company should constructively engage with international initiatives for the equitable distribution of vaccines and therapeutics, such as the Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) or the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), and the ACT Accelerator (COVAX). The company should also publicly commit to not enforcing the exclusive rights of Covid-19 related patents, and enter into non-exclusive, transparent licensing agreements for its Covid-19 products with other companies.
The company is in discussions with C-TAP about “formalizing their patent-free model for sharing the vaccine technology”.
The vaccine itself is not under patent.
The company has not yet signed an agreement with the ACT Accelerator, but it plans to during this year, once it gets regulatory approval.
The Baylor team is intending to widely license the vaccine to manufacturers in low- and middle-income countries. They have already licensed their product to producers in Bangladesh, South Africa, and Botswana, with potential deals for Taiwan and Vietnam also. The vaccine is also licensed to Biological E.
The company should engage in efforts to further equitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccines/therapeutics, by equitably distributing its supplies globally, devising fair pricing strategies, and making the active ingredient for its product available to other manufacturers. The company should also engage in full technology transfer to other manufacturers, including the necessary transfer of skills, legal components, knowledge and intellectual property. Where applicable, the company should agree to waive rights in regulatory test data, and refrain from enforcing TRIPS+ measures.
[Only applies to therapeutics]
The vaccine has been licensed to Biological E with no patent “and no strings attached”. Texas Children’s Hospital has initiated a full technology transfer process to immunity Bio. It has also been approved in Botswana, where it will be produced in a new Covid-19 manufacturing plant.
Doses of the vaccine will cost around 2-3 US dollars and the developers have no financial stake in the vaccine (Baylor College will receive a fee).
