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Canada and the pharmaceutical industry in the time of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic showed the close relationship between the Canadian government and the pharmaceutical industry when it came to both domestic and international issues. Domestically, the government chose to prioritize advice about vaccine acquisition from a panel of heavily conflicted people; it...

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Autor principal: Lexchin, Joel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10631262/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37574784
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/27551938231195434
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author Lexchin, Joel
author_facet Lexchin, Joel
author_sort Lexchin, Joel
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description The COVID-19 pandemic showed the close relationship between the Canadian government and the pharmaceutical industry when it came to both domestic and international issues. Domestically, the government chose to prioritize advice about vaccine acquisition from a panel of heavily conflicted people; it signed contracts worth billions of dollars with companies for vaccines but the contents of contracts were largely kept secret. The government also committed over CAD$1 billion in funding for research on COVID-19 but without any requirement that any forthcoming intellectual property or diagnostic and therapeutic products had to be accessible and affordable in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). On the international stage, Canada did not support the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool that aimed to provide a one-stop shop for scientific knowledge, data, and intellectual property to be shared equitably by the global community. It delayed donating vaccines to LMICs and bought vaccines from a facility designed mainly to provide vaccines to that group of countries. The government did not dismantle roadblocks that prevented a Canadian company from sending vaccines to Bolivia. Finally, it was ambiguous about whether it supported a patent waiver for COVID-19 technologies at the World Trade Organization.
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spelling pubmed-106312622023-11-14 Canada and the pharmaceutical industry in the time of COVID-19 Lexchin, Joel Int J Soc Determinants Health Health Serv V. Equity and the Pharmaceutical Industry The COVID-19 pandemic showed the close relationship between the Canadian government and the pharmaceutical industry when it came to both domestic and international issues. Domestically, the government chose to prioritize advice about vaccine acquisition from a panel of heavily conflicted people; it signed contracts worth billions of dollars with companies for vaccines but the contents of contracts were largely kept secret. The government also committed over CAD$1 billion in funding for research on COVID-19 but without any requirement that any forthcoming intellectual property or diagnostic and therapeutic products had to be accessible and affordable in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). On the international stage, Canada did not support the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool that aimed to provide a one-stop shop for scientific knowledge, data, and intellectual property to be shared equitably by the global community. It delayed donating vaccines to LMICs and bought vaccines from a facility designed mainly to provide vaccines to that group of countries. The government did not dismantle roadblocks that prevented a Canadian company from sending vaccines to Bolivia. Finally, it was ambiguous about whether it supported a patent waiver for COVID-19 technologies at the World Trade Organization. SAGE Publications 2023-08-13 2023-10 /pmc/articles/PMC10631262/ /pubmed/37574784 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/27551938231195434 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle V. Equity and the Pharmaceutical Industry
Lexchin, Joel
Canada and the pharmaceutical industry in the time of COVID-19
title Canada and the pharmaceutical industry in the time of COVID-19
title_full Canada and the pharmaceutical industry in the time of COVID-19
title_fullStr Canada and the pharmaceutical industry in the time of COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed Canada and the pharmaceutical industry in the time of COVID-19
title_short Canada and the pharmaceutical industry in the time of COVID-19
title_sort canada and the pharmaceutical industry in the time of covid-19
topic V. Equity and the Pharmaceutical Industry
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10631262/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37574784
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/27551938231195434
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