Marisol Touraine
Marisol Touraine is a French politician who served as Minister of Social Affairs and Health under Prime Ministers Jean-Marc Ayrault, Manuel Valls, and Bernard Cazeneuve. 1). She is currently chair of the Executive Board of Unitaid. 2) 3)
Touraine is a career vaccine proponent 4) who worked to dramatically increase vaccine mandates in France (from 3 to 11). 5)
She was present at the inauguration of the Wuhan Institute of Virology's (WIV) Level 4 Biosafety Laboratory (BSL4), the first of its kind in all of China. The WIV planned to host 50 French researchers in residency who were to provide technical and safety training for researchers at the French-designed lab, though China canceled those plans soon after. 6) 7)
Early on the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, Touraine published an article on a South African publication, the Daily Maverick, arguing for the universal accessibility of treatments and vaccines by proposing that governments share intellectual property rights with industry:
We ask that governments and institutions currently financing or contributing to the development of drugs, vaccines or technologies for COVID-19 agree from the outset in their contracts with industry to the sharing of intellectual property rights taking into account the urgency we find ourselves in. 8)