Devex Checkup: New pandemic treaty draft exposes deep divisions

Ahead of the release of the latest draft of the pandemic treaty on Tuesday, activists took pharmaceutical companies to task for spending nearly as much on payouts to executives and shareholders during the COVID-19 pandemic as they spent on research and development.

According to the People’s Vaccine Alliance, 20 of the largest pharmaceutical companies spent $377.6 billion on payouts between 2020 and 2022, compared to $414.6 billion on innovative activities.

The point, as Piotr Kolczynski of Oxfam and the alliance explained to me at the World Health Summit, is that the industry and its allies have long warned “that touching incentives would harm innovation, but we see how profitable this sector is. … If we’ve got more rules on equitable access, it will not harm the industry’s business case.”