The world’s food crisis could last until 2024 unless safe corridors are established to move Ukrainian food stocks currently blocked by Russia, according to Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
She explained at a press conference on the policy outlook for trade and food at the ongoing World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland:
Trade, she pointed out, was part of the solutions to the simultaneous crises gripping the world, adding that the world faces the security crisis, the pandemic, the climate crisis, food crisis, all at same time.
Okonjo-Iweala explained that the WTO recently revised down its projections for trade growth this year from 4.7 per cent to three per cent.
“Meanwhile, pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer has announced that it would supply all its current and future patent-protected medicines and vaccines on a not-for-profit basis to 45 lower-income countries, saying it was talking to other big drug-makers about similar steps.
Announcing an “accord for a healthier world” at the WEF annual meeting in Davos, the New York-based pharma firm pledged to provide all its products that are available in the US and Europe on a cost basis to 1.2 billion people in all 27 low-income countries such as Afghanistan and Ethiopia, plus 18 lower-middle-income countries including Ghana.
Pfizer had previously been accused of, “pandemic profiteering” over the huge profits it has generated from coronavirus-related medicines over the past two years.
We are living in a time where science is increasingly demonstrating the ability to take on the world’s most devastating diseases,” Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive, said.
He told the WEF gathering in Switzerland: “I’m certain that the other pharmaceutical companies will follow.
“So medicines will be available I hope but it’s not going to be enough.
Elsewhere in Davos on Wednesday, a nurse from Liberia, George Poe Williams, staged a, “clap for pharma profits” in protest at the profits made by drugmakers, some of which, including Pfizer, refuse to waive patents on Covid-19 vaccines.
Pfizer is working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop new products such as vaccines to prevent the deadly Group B streptococcus, and for respiratory syncytial virus, which can be serious for children and older people.
