Eric LeCompote was interviewed by the Alabama Political Reporter on the WTO's meeting this week to consider temporarily lifting vaccine patent protections. Read an excerpt below, and click here for the full story. 

WTO to meet to consider temporarily lifting vaccine patent protection

By Brandon Moseley 

The World Trade Organization is meeting to discuss waiving vaccine patents to make it easier for countries to access COVID vaccines. The global trade body will review the proposal to waive pharmaceutical vaccine patents as part of a menu of trade pandemic response policies.

Eric LeCompte is the executive director of the religious development group Jubilee USA Network. “Not enough vaccines are getting to developing countries,” said LeCompte. “Part of the solution is supporting countries to produce the vaccines that they and other countries desperately need.”

LeCompte is advocating on behalf of this proposal as well as others under consideration and debate this week at the WTO.

According to the United Nations, wealthy countries received 82 percent of the COVID-19 vaccine doses, while poor nations received less than 1 percent. LeCompte told APR that, “75 percent of the total vaccine dosages manufactured to date have gone to just ten countries – the wealthiest countries.”

 

Read more here.