Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs Report on equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines recommends Ireland endorse C-TAP - Dr Aisling McMahon quoted in this Report.

Monday, March 15, 2021 - 10:00

The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence published a report on 11th March 2021, on the ‘Distribution of Vaccines to Developing Countries’ which recommended that the Irish government should formally endorse the World Health Organisation’s Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP). This report follows on from the Committee meeting on 9th February 2021, where Dr Aisling McMahon and Dr Kieran Harkin representing Access to Medicines Ireland (AMI) were invited to address the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence on equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines in low and middle income countries, alongside Ms. Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, and Dr David Nabarro, the World Health Organization’s Special Envoy on Covid-19.
At the Oireachtas Committee meeting on 9th February, AMI called for global solidarity and action to alleviate vaccine inequity globally, and for governments to support initiatives, like the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) as a key step to achieving this. Dr McMahon highlighted that the C-TAP initiative has the potential to maximise manufacturing capacity for COVID-19 vaccines, medicines and diagnostics globally, to accelerate the development of new technologies by encouraging the sharing of know-how and data, and to facilitate more affordable access to vaccines, medicines and diagnostics for COVID-19.
The Committee’s Report published on 11th March (press release and full report available here)  recognises the current global inequalities around access to COVID-19 vaccines, and makes several important recommendations including that: the Irish government formally endorse the C-TAP; the Irish government advocate for C-TAP and other mechanisms to address global access to vaccines at an international level, particularly at the EU and at the UN Security Council; government assistance in encouraging more pharmaceutical companies to join the C-TAP; and Ireland increase financial support for the World Health Organisation’s ACT Accelerator.
Dr McMahon’s evidence to the Committee is quoted in this report, where she highlighted in the context of addressing the current inequalities around access to COVID-19 vaccines that: “This is a situation where the self-interested, pragmatic, and moral things to do are the same.” In other words, there is both a moral imperative to address the vast inequalities around access to COVID-19 vaccines arising globally from a social justice perspective, but also a recognition that global equitable access is vital to bring the pandemic under control everywhere. Without such global access, the risk of outbreaks re-emerging through travel and of new variants arising which may be resistant to existing vaccines will remain.  As Dr Mike Ryan has stated in the COVID-19 context: ‘None of us is safe until all of us are safe’
A video of the Oireachtas Committee meeting on 9th February is available here.
Dr McMahon is an Assistant Professor of Law in Maynooth University where her research specialises in intellectual property and medical law. She has published widely in these fields, including a recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics examining the role of patent holders in the context of global equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, medicines and diagnostics.