Breaking the monopoly

This month, the world could have been celebrating the waning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Instead, vaccine apartheid and restricted production continue to fuel the spread of the coronavirus.

A year has passed since the first Covid-19 vaccines were approved, offering hope that humanity could be liberated from this disease. Scientists did their part by creating safe and effective vaccines with unprecedented speed. But world leaders failed to deliver them to all.

Public health experts, developing-country governments, and the People’s Vaccine Alliance warned that persistent low vaccination coverage in large parts of the world would create a risk of new variants and prolong the pandemic.

We argued that ending the pandemic required enabling developing countries to make their own vaccines. We urged rich countries to share the rights to vaccine technology and Covid-19 treatments, removing barriers at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Former world leaders, Nobel laureates, nurses, jurists, and millions of individuals have echoed this call.

But rich countries turned a deaf ear, bowing to the pressure of pharmaceutical corporations. Despite receiving huge amounts of public funding to produce the vaccines, these companies still dictate the terms of supply, distribution, and pricing. Pfizer, Moderna, and BioNTech alone are making a profit of $1,000 every second from their Covid-19 vaccines.

Putting profits first has resulted in less than 4 percent of people in low-income countries being fully vaccinated, creating an optimal breeding ground for new variants. Meanwhile, at least five million people have now died of the virus worldwide – though some calculations put the number considerably higher.

In Africa, pain mingles with anger. The continent remains unprotected – just one-quarter of African health workers are fully vaccinated – and is bracing for more variants. Like many Africans, I have lost friends and family to this disease. Exhausted relatives in my home country of Uganda no longer announce deaths – let alone report cases. In Africa, six of every seven Covid-19 cases have gone undetected.

It feels like deja vu. Between 1997 and 2006, 12 million Africans died from HIV/AIDS because pharmaceutical monopolies priced poor countries out of lifesaving antiretroviral drugs. Getting access took a spirited movement that began with people living with HIV and expanded to include everyone from doctors and religious leaders to Nelson Mandela. Eventually, governments and producers of generic drugs in India, Thailand, Brazil, and elsewhere worked together to break the monopoly, and the price of HIV drugs dropped by 99 percent.

Imagine if the world had learned the lessons of that historical injustice. Imagine if a year ago, world leaders had agreed to compensate the vaccine developers generously, but not give them exclusive rights.

Excerpted: ‘The Vaccine Monopolies Must Be Broken’

Courtesy: Commondreams.org