peoples vaccine

An article in the British Medical Journal and Die Welt, published today, has found that the KenUP Foundation - acting as a consultant on behalf of BioNTech – has been pushing South African manufacturers not to get involved the World Health Organization Vaccine Technology Transfer Hub’s project of copying the manufacturing process of existing mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and have been calling for the project to be ‘terminated immediately’. 

An international coalition of human rights law groups, public health experts, and civil society organisations is taking legal action against the US, UK, Germany, Norway, and Switzerland, on the grounds that these countries are in violation of international human rights law by failing to intervene on what has been an inequitable and racially discriminatory rollout of the vaccine and other COVID healthcare technologies. 

In response to Merck’s announcement that it has granted a license for its promising COVID-19 pill to the Medicines Patent Pool, Robbie Silverman, Oxfam America’s Senior Manager for Private Sector Engagement, made the following statement:

“Merck’s move to license molnupiravir is welcome as it could indeed mean increased access to its promising COVID-19 drug in the poorest countries in the world.

Developing countries have been hit with an endless tide of inadequate gestures and broken promises from rich countries and pharmaceutical companies, who are failing to deliver billions of doses they promised while blocking the real solutions to vaccine inequality, according to a new report published today by the People’s Vaccine Alliance. 

Oxfam India welcomes the US decision to back the waiver of intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines.

The United States government last night moved to support a waiver of intellectual property protections of the Covid-19 vaccine. The People’s Vaccine Alliance has been campaigning to suspend Covid-19 intellectual property protections and has this reaction: This is the decision the world needed: by backing a waiver of intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines the Biden Administration can increase the global supply of vaccines and deal a deathblow to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Former UN Human Rights Commissioner and Irish President, Mary Robinson, a vocal advocate for a People’s Vaccine has joined calls of 174 former world leaders and Nobel laureates for a patent waiver at the international level. This was prompted by news that US President Biden is considering supporting a proposal at the WTO that would temporarily suspend Covid-19 vaccine patents.