Dr Siva Thambisetty recently spoke at a High-Level dialogue on TRIPS waiver: Challenges and Opportunities organised by a coalition of global health and civil society organisations. She joined panellists Prof Joseph Stiglitz, MEP Sara Mathieu, US Congressman Ro Khanna and Prof Graham Dutfield on 13th September to discuss the proposed waiver of rules under the TRIPS agreement at the WTO as a means to scale up production of Covid-19 vaccines amidst shortage of supply to LMICs and access to other health technologies for the prevention and treatment of Covid-19. Dr Thambisetty responding to the EU proposal on use of compulsory licenses observed that the proposal presented as an alternative to a broad TRIPS waiver was performative, reductive and selective and unlikely to result in greatly scaling up production.
Dr Thambisetty's engagement with increased production and equitable distribution of vaccines is based on collaborative academic research that includes Dr Luke Mcdonagh. You can find a link to their paper here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3851737
Watch Dr Thambisetty's contribution here.
Watch the full video here.