Vaccine equity

PRIME MINISTER and Caricom chairman Dr Rowley is on record calling for a more equitable system of vaccine distribution to give developing countries a fighting chance to overcome the covid19 pandemic. This pandemic has once again revealed the extent to which developing countries are at the mercy of large profit-driven pharmaceutical companies.

As we strive to vaccinate our population as a precondition to returning our economy back to some semblance of normality, we are in a long line of helpless nations that have neither the political nor economic clout to challenge the naked vaccine nationalism that has once again reared its ugly head.

While many developed nations have significantly advanced their vaccination agendas, developing nations such as ours are virtually begging vaccine manufacturers to facilitate their roll-out programmes. Cognisant of the existing geopolitical order, the World Health Organization (WHO) anticipated such a scenario and established the Covax facility – an arrangement that aims to provide over two billion vaccine doses to developing countries by the end of 2021. But production has not been matching need, to the detriment of less wealthy nations. Despite calls for the ramping up of global vaccine production, there continues to be significant global supply-demand gaps.

Education International (EI) has been a leading voice in opposition to vaccine nationalism and large pharmaceutical companies profiteering from a world pandemic. It continues to urge members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to support the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waiver proposal initiated by South Africa and India, to temporarily lift intellectual property rights on covid19 vaccines and medical products.

This proposal would provide more freedom for manufacturers and suppliers to operate in an expedited manner, given the urgency with which the global community must act to achieve herd immunity and stave off further social and economic calamity.

EI’s general secretary states, “Inequitable access to covid19 vaccines risks prolonging the pandemic, the ensuing school closures, and the educational disruption for months and even years to come. We are only beginning to grasp the longer-term negative impact of school closures on children and youth, and the disproportionate effects on already disadvantaged groups of students. A safe and permanent return to onsite education around the world requires equitable access to vaccines everywhere.”

Given the already devastating consequences of the pandemic, it is imperative that the global community acts decisively to ensure rapid access to affordable medicines and medical products. Any barriers to the accelerated production and distribution of vaccines and related medical products must be dismantled with alacrity, especially for the most vulnerable nations experiencing acute shortages.

While over 100 countries (mostly developing) have expressed their support for TRIPS, members of the European Union and the large pharmaceutical companies have unsurprisingly expressed their opposition to such a move. They argue that patents are an incentive to companies to invest large sums of money in necessary scientific research and development and that the transfer of the technology is not as easy and straight forward.

They further claim that they have the means and capacity to meet the global demand. But history will tell a different story. Similar arguments were advanced regarding the use of antiretroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS. Thankfully, TRIPS allowed for compulsory licencing, where in a public health emergency a country may copy patented drugs without the permission of the original manufacturer with WTO approval.

Interestingly, Moderna has quite commendably pledged to waive its covid19 patents during the pandemic. While mRNA is a novel approach to vaccine manufacturing, the WHO, in an attempt to facilitate the quick transfer of this new technology, has established a technology transfer hub to provide the mechanism to share the technology globally. The TRIPS waiver request cites exceptional circumstances as its basis, and will only apply for a specified period until widespread vaccination is in place globally, and the majority of the world’s population has developed immunity.

The need for global solidarity in the fight to end this pandemic is paramount. Now that the scientific breakthroughs have been made to develop covid19 vaccines in record time, all existing global manufacturing capacity and distribution must be expeditiously harnessed to ensure rich and poor countries simultaneously emerge from this pandemic as soon as possible.

Wealthy countries also need to reverse their over-ordering and hoarding of doses, lift vaccine export restrictions, expedite regulatory approval processes and incentivise companies to enter into voluntary technology transfers through unprecedented global partnerships and multilateral co-operation. Profits cannot assume precedence over lives and livelihoods. Vaccine hegemony represents a global threat which must be strongly denounced.