Oxfam & People’s Vaccine Alliance reaction to calls for WHO’s Africa vaccine Hub project to be ‘terminated’

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 in 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’.

In response, Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager, said: “It is unconscionable that companies like BioNTech that have made billions from these publicly subsidized vaccines are not only refusing to share the vaccine technology with the WHO but are reportedly now trying to undermine their efforts to develop mRNA vaccines in partnership with developing country manufacturers. 

“To push for the termination of this life-saving project in order to protect the interests of pharmaceutical companies is shameful, at a time when over 90 percent of people in the poorest countries still haven’t been fully vaccinated. What needs ‘terminating’ is the pharmaceutical monopolies locking the life-saving vaccines out of reach for millions of people across low- and middle-income countries. 

"The failure of rich country governments to step in and break these all-powerful monopolies is unforgivable. They must end their blind faith that profit-hungry pharma corporations will voluntarily do the right thing by humanity.”

Fatima Hassan, Founder and Director of Health Justice Initiative, said: “For two years, Western pharmaceutical giants have peddled falsehoods claiming that intellectual property rules are not a barrier to global vaccine production. Yet, now that lower-income countries have started developing COVID-19 vaccines, pharmaceutical industry goons are threatening South African manufacturers with patent infringement. 

“This shameful scaremongering is further evidence that world leaders need to suspend intellectual property on all COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments to unlock the productive capacity needed to end this pandemic. If we don't, big pharma will try to bully and intimidate global South manufacturers into submission.”