Cambridge protestors have piled fresh pressure on pharmaceutical companies to unlock vaccines for low and middle income countries, as the world marks one year from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) declaration of the coronavirus pandemic.
Activists from Global Justice Now have dropped a banner demanding a ‘People’s Vaccine not a profit vaccine’ outside AstraZeneca’s Cambridge Science Hub, one of the company’s three global research and development sites.
‘Drop the patents. End Vaccine Apartheid’ was beamed onto the London office of the UK pharma lobby, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), to demand companies join the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Covid-19 Technology Access Pool to share vaccine technology and know-how.
The UK has a “golden opportunity” to pressure pharmaceutical companies to change course at this week’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting, campaigners have warned, but risks a “historic failure” that could cost countless more lives if it doesn’t act, campaigners have warned.
Last night leaders from the UN, South Africa, Indonesia, Colombia and the UK called on pharma giants to stop standing in the way of measures to increase global production on the Covid-19 vaccine at an online rally.
The rally was organised by the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of campaign groups including Global Justice Now, UNAIDS, Oxfam, Amnesty International, and ActionAid.
It comes amid a battle at the WTO to suspend intellectual property on Covid-19 vaccines, spearheaded by India and South Africa. The move could rapidly increase vaccine production by suspending patents on all Covid19 vaccines during the pandemic and allowing a global expansion of manufacturing.
While rich countries like the UK have started rapidly vaccinating their populations, not a single dose had been administered in 130 poorer countries by mid-February. It’s estimated that nearly half of countries won’t have widespread vaccination until 2023.
AstraZeneca took positive steps last year by pledging broad and equitable access to the vaccine as well as committing to non-profit pricing during the pandemic.[1]
But these promises are unravelling as it has been reported that Uganda is paying three times the EU price for the AstraZeneca vaccine [2]. The company is refusing to share the rights and blueprints to make the vaccines, restricting production to their own supply chains.
Millions could needlessly die while waiting for vaccines to be produced if these are kept secret. Global Justice Now is calling on AstraZeneca and other pharmaceutical companies to let low and middle income countries use their own productive capacity to ramp up production of vaccines. Future profits must not be put before present need in a global emergency.
Ana Serrano, Cambridge activist with Global Justice Now, said:
“After one year and more than two million deaths, there is finally a glimmer of hope that this pandemic might end. But right here on our doorstep in Cambridge, AstraZeneca executives are lobbying to protect their own future profits ahead of lives across the world.
“Big pharma companies are refusing to share the recipes to the jabs, restricting production to their own supply chains and delaying the end of this deadly pandemic. We have the capacity to rapidly roll out vaccines across the world, but factories are lying idle because governments like ours are putting corporate profits ahead of the lives of people across the world.
“We have a golden opportunity to change course. If we don’t, we’ll be complicit in a historic failure that will cost countless lives.”
