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Rich countries are piling up doses of Covid vaccines and people living in poor countries will miss them, warns a coalition of campaigning bodies.
Photo: AFP
The People’s Vaccine Alliance says that nearly 70 low-income countries will only be able to vaccinate one in 10 people.
This is despite the fact that Oxford-AstraZeneca has promised to provide 64 percent of its doses to people in developing countries.
Steps are being taken to ensure fair access to vaccines around the world.
This vaccine bet, known as Covax, has managed to obtain 700 million doses of vaccines to distribute among the 92 lower-income countries that have registered.
But even with this plan in place, organizations like Amnesty International, Oxfam, and Global Justice Now say there is not enough for everyone, and pharmaceutical companies should share their technology to ensure more doses are produced.
Their analysis found that rich countries have bought enough doses to vaccinate their entire population three times if all vaccines are approved for use.
Canada, for example, has ordered enough vaccines to protect every Canadian five times, he says.
Despite the fact that wealthy nations made up only 14 percent of the world’s population, they had so far purchased 53 percent of all the most promising vaccines.
“No one should be prevented from receiving a life-saving vaccine because of the country they live in or the amount of money in their pocket,” said Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s health policy manager.
“Unless something drastically changes, billions of people around the world will not receive a safe and effective vaccine for Covid-19 in the next few years.”
The People’s Vaccine Alliance calls on all pharmaceutical corporations working on Covid-19 vaccines to openly share their technology and intellectual property so that billions more doses can be manufactured and made available to all who need them.
This can be done through the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 technology access group, he says.
AstraZeneca, the company that makes the Covid vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, is committed to making it available to the developing world on a non-profit basis.
It is cheaper than the others and can be stored at refrigerator temperature, which makes it easy to distribute around the world.
Activists say that one company cannot supply enough vaccines for everyone.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has already received approval in the UK and the most vulnerable are starting to get vaccinated this week. It is likely to receive approval from regulators in the US and Europe soon, which means it could be some time before it is shared with poorer nations.
Two other vaccines, from Moderna and Oxford-AstraZeneca, are awaiting regulatory approval in several countries.
The Russian vaccine, Sputnik, has also announced positive trial results, and four other vaccines are undergoing late-stage clinical trials.
– BBC
