A COALITION of 16 public-health and international aid organisations are calling on the government to ensure that the proceeds from a global coronavirus fundraising summit today lead to “equal access” to vaccines, treatments and tests.

Campaigners are warning against pharmaceutical giants using exclusivity and intellectual property rights to slap high prices on medicines and tests.

Conditions should be imposed on funding for the research and development of products so that the drugs and tests can instead be sold cheaply to developing countries and the public can obtain them free of charge, the coalition said.

The groups are calling for these concrete commitments to be made during the Coronavirus Global Response Summit, at which world leaders are set to co-ordinate an international response to the pandemic.

Britain will co-chair the teleconference, which has the aim of raising just over £6.5 billion in initial funding to “kick-start the global co-operation” against Covid-19.

Global Justice Now, which is leading the coalition of 16 groups, is demanding that “all funding pledged at the summit actually leads to medical products that reach all who need them, especially the most vulnerable.”

The British government has already committed to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator and its main aim of ensuring equal access to medicines and tests.

The US, which has announced that it is cutting off it funding of the WHO, was the only nation failing to pledge that the richest countries will not keep research results from developing nations.

The coalition warned that “intellectual property, including patent monopolies and other exclusivities on any Covid-19 medical products developed using public funding, should not be allowed.”

It added: “Providing funds for researching and developing Covid-19 health products with no conditions attached will result in pharmaceutical monopolies that lead to high prices, restricted supply and corporate profiteering, at the expense of patients’ lives.

“The only way to turn the rhetoric on equitable access into reality is to attach conditions on public funding and introduce transparent accountability procedures so that public funding leads to the development of much-needed vaccines, treatments and tests for all.”

The coalition is made up of Stopaids, Medecins Sans Frontieres UK, Health Poverty Action, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines UK, Medact , T1International, Results UK, Just Treatment, Act Up London, People’s Health Movement UK, TranspariMed, Salamander Trust, Youth Stop Aids Chasing Zero and Frontline Aids.