Sir, – Your editorial “The Irish Times view on the global vaccine effort: a moral failure with a high cost” (February 12th) outlines the importance of an equitable global rollout of Covid-19 vaccines.
The fundamental problem, however, is a scarcity of vaccines, which can only be resolved by increasing production capacity globally. To do so, pharmaceutical companies must share their know-how, data, and intellectual property rights in order to expedite research and to enable others to produce vaccines.
There are initiatives such as the World Health Organisation’s Covid-19 Technology Access Pool, which should be supported by governments and companies.
Given the extent of this extraordinary health crisis, and the significant public investment that has supported the development of many Covid-19 vaccines, such sharing and collaboration is vital and is not an unreasonable expectation. – Yours, etc,
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Dr KIERAN
HARKIN,
Access to Medicines,
Comhlamh,
Dublin 2.