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New Delhi, Jan 11 (PTI): The WTO\u2019s General Council has discussed India\u2019s call to convene a virtual ministerial meeting on the World Trade Organisation\u2019s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the patent waiver proposal.<\/p>\n
India on December 23, 2021 sent a letter to the General Council Chair to hold a virtual ministerial meeting on the response of WTO (World Trade Organisation) to the pandemic, including the proposal to waive certain provisions of the TRIPS agreement for COVID-19-related vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics.<\/p>\n
On January 10, the General Council Chair Ambassador Dacio Castillo (Honduras) convened a meeting to discuss the World Trade Organisation\u2019s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, WTO said in a statement.<\/p>\n
After the meeting, Castillo said he would continue to hold consultations with members on the Indian proposal, underlining \u201cthe urgency and importance of reaching a meaningful outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
A common WTO response to COVID-19 \u201cremains an urgent priority for the membership,\u201d he said. WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has called for an urgent action towards a comprehensive WTO outcome on pandemic response.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore than two years have passed since the onset of the pandemic. The emergence of the Omicron variant, which forced us to postpone our Twelfth Ministerial Conference, reminded us of the risks of allowing large sections of the world to remain unvaccinated.\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
WTO is a 164-member multilateral body which formulates rules for global exports and imports and adjudicates disputes between two or more than two countries on trade-related issues.<\/p>\n
Expressing disappointment over no progress on TRIPs (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) waiver proposal to deal with the pandemic, India has called for including this proposal into WTO\u2019s proposed response package.<\/p>\n
In October 2020, India and South Africa submitted the first proposal, suggesting a waiver for all WTO members on the implementation of certain provisions of the TRIPs agreement in relation to the prevention, containment or treatment of COVID-19. In May 2021, a revised proposal was submitted. TRIPs came into effect in January 1995. It is a multilateral agreement on intellectual property (IP) rights such as copyright, industrial designs, patents and protection of undisclosed information or trade secrets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi, Jan 11 (PTI): The WTO\u2019s General Council has discussed India\u2019s call to convene a virtual ministerial meeting on the World Trade Organisation\u2019s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the patent waiver proposal. India on December 23, 2021 sent a letter to the General Council Chair to hold a virtual ministerial meeting on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-181531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-national"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}