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The COVID-19 pandemic, like a scab torn from a wound, has exposed systemic inequality and racism throughout our healthcare system. Now, the distribution of desperately needed vaccines is further revealing the depths of inequity and immorality at the center of our globalized economy. Rich countries like the US, UK, Canada and the EU are buying most of the world’s vaccine supply in advance, stockpiling three to five times the amount of vaccines needed to immunize their populations. Meanwhile, billions of people in the poorest countries will likely wait until 2022 or later before they have a chance to receive a potentially life-saving coronavirus vaccine.
The People’s Vaccine Alliance, a broad coalition that includes Oxfam, UNAIDS, Amnesty International and more, has formed to challenge this vaccine nationalism. “Nearly 70 poor countries will only be able to vaccinate one in ten people against COVID-19 next year unless urgent action is taken,” states the Alliance website. “Rich nations that make up only 14 percent of the world’s population have purchased up to 53 percent of all the most promising vaccines so far.”
Oxfam’s Dr Mohga Kamal-Yanni, Policy Advisor to the People’s Vaccine Alliance, appeared on Democracy Now! Time for the news from Oxford, England, where one of the most promising vaccines – from a partnership between the University of Oxford and the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca – is about to be approved. Oxford required AstraZeneca to include some distribution and pricing commitments as a condition for collaboration. As a result, India, Brazil and Argentina will receive hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines that they may not have been able to buy on the open market.
“You cannot leave the decision about the supply, the price, which country, which patient, to the companies,” said Kamal-Yanni. “That is not his job. Your job is to produce. The job of governments is to make more production, that is why we must empower other producers [by] enable technology sharing and remove the intellectual property barrier, so there are no patents on vaccines. Then other companies can produce the vaccine. “
Achal Prabhala, a public health advocate and coordinator for AccessIBSA, which campaigns for access to medicines in India, Brazil and South Africa, has been working for years to dismantle patent and intellectual property limitations on life-saving medicines. His focus now is to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines and therapies are available without patents that make them too expensive for billions of people.
“South Africa and India made a proposal at the WTO, the World Trade Organization, to temporarily suspend a trade rule called TRIPS. [Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights], which is an agreement on … intellectual property around the world, ”Prabhala explained on Democracy Now! “All WTO member countries should be exempt … so everything we need to survive the pandemic – masks, test kits, but now especially vaccines – should be able to be manufactured in the largest possible capacity to get them faster and cheaper for as many people as we can around the world. “The problem, he adds, is that” if five or six very rich countries oppose the proposal, it will not pass.
Prabhala’s work has become very personal: “My father had COVID. He is 87 years old. My mother is 72 years old. I would definitely like them to have a vaccine and get it pretty quickly. The prospect of these vaccines being delivered with no chance for the majority of the world to receive them is truly heartbreaking. “
His prescription is to treat COVID-19 vaccines the same way we treat the flu. The annual flu vaccine is updated each flu season to attack the flu virus as it evolves over time. Prabhala described the global system behind the widely available flu vaccine:
“It is a collaborative infrastructure that they have established in the WHO that involves 110 different countries, 130 different laboratories, that gather information on which strains of influenza are circulating in their countries. That information is collected … WHO then publishes what would be called the influenza vaccine formula, which can be produced by anyone, anywhere, completely free from any intellectual property or monopoly, which means that billions of people have taken it since the 1970s under this cooperative and shared system of sharing knowledge and finance. “
The coronavirus does not respect borders. While each nation has its own unique circumstances and response to the pandemic, no nation will be safe until all nations are safe. A coordinated collective effort is absolutely critical. A popular vaccine would prioritize global public health over the profits of pharmaceutical corporations, and serve as a model to combat the pandemics we face now and in the future.
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