American business magnate and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates refused the idea of sharing covid-19 vaccine formula with developing states and he was targeted with criticism over his refusal.
While answering a question during an interview, Gates rejected the notion of patent sharing due to the complexity of manufacturing safe vaccines.
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“Well, there’s only so many vaccine factories in the world and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines. And so moving something that had never been done — moving a vaccine, say, from a [Johnson & Johnson] factory into a factory in India — it’s novel — it’s only because of our grants and expertise that can happen at all”, he said.
“Is not intellectual property. It’s not like there’s some idle vaccine factory, with regulatory approval, that makes magically safe vaccines. You know, you’ve got to do the trial on these things. Every manufacturing process needs to be looked at in a very careful way”, he added.
The comments by the billionaire garnered criticism globally and he was accused of holding the vaccine formula away from the developing states.
Bill Gates doesn’t want to share vaccine formulas? pic.twitter.com/ucOnVCfbEa
— Kelechi (@kelechnekoff) April 26, 2021
Bill Gates dedicated his entire professional life to ruthlessly consolidating his monopoly, why on earth would he share vaccines lol https://t.co/eAvfX6HctO
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) April 26, 2021
Bill Gates, a bored billionaire who appointed himself head of global health, says “no” to other billionaires sharing the vaccine production rights across global south. A vaccine almost entirely developed by public investment.
https://t.co/ObNEGY2QVY— raf (@rafaelshimunov) April 26, 2021
On the other hand, Bill Gates had a telephonic conversation with Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan today in regards to the recent coronavirus crisis in the country.