Bolivia organizes international forum for COVID-19 public response

By PPO Abogados

As part of its going discussions related to intellectual property rights during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bolivia organized an international forum to promote global reflection and identify synergistic actions regarding exchange and technique of public policy options available to developing countries.

The Forum is organized by the Bolivian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in coordination with the South Center, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Bolivia and the Public University of El Alto (UPEA).

“In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a situation of inequity of access to vaccines in the world. According to recent analysis by the United Nations Development Program, enough COVID-19 vaccines will be produced in 2021 to cover 70 percent of the population of each country. However, most of that supply was captured by industrialized countries, making it unlikely that many low- and middle-income countries will be able to fully vaccinate their populations before 2023,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated in a press release.

Bolivia notified to the World Trade Organization (WTO) its need to import pharmaceutical products under the special compulsory licensing system. It notified that it currently has no manufacturing capacities in the pharmaceutical sector. In particular, the intention is to import the vaccine, Ad26.COV2.S, a replication-incompetent adenovirus type 26 (AD16) vectored vaccine encoding a stabilized variant of the S protein of SARS-Cov-2.

Bolivia has also supported at the WTO the proposal for a waiver from certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement, co-sponsored by over 60 delegations headed by India and South Africa.

In June 2021 WTO members moved closer to a text-based process to address the proposal put forward by such delegations aimed at achieving the common goal of providing global equitable access to vaccines and other medical products.