Members' Business — S6M-02360 Sarah Boyack: Ending Pharmaceutical Monopolies of COVID-19 Vaccines

That the Parliament notes the calls by a coalition of Scottish charities to support the ending of what it considers to be pharmaceutical monopolies; understands that these monopolies are reportedly artificially limiting vaccine supply to low-income countries; considers that vaccine inequality has resulted from a handful of pharmaceutical companies rationing supply, by refusing to share their vaccine recipes and know-how with the rest of the world, and notes the calls on the Prime Minister to back plans to waive intellectual property rules and to insist that vaccine know-how and technology is shared via the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool, in order to enable a life-saving escalation in global vaccine production and help avoid the development of further COVID-19 variants like Omicron, which may impact people in Scotland, including in the Lothian region.