covid

Pfizer voluntarily licenses oral Covid treatment

November 16, 2021

In reaction to Pfizer’s announcement of voluntary licenses of its COVID-19 oral antiviral treatment Paxlovid to the Medicines Patent Pool, People’s Vaccine Alliance spokesperson and Oxfam America’s Senior Advocacy Advisor, Robbie Silverman, said:

“Pfizer’s announcement to voluntarily licence the COVID treatment Paxlovid is welcome but is far from enough. It means billions of people in developing countries will be able to access the treatment through generic production, but billions of people will still be left without as the deal excludes many developing countries like Iraq and Lebanon.

“This move also begs the important question: If Pfizer can share data and intellectual property on a medicine, why have they so far categorically refused to do so for their COVID vaccine? Perhaps the answer is in the profit they continue to reap thanks to their monopoly, hundreds of dollars every single second.

“Today’s licensing agreement shows that Pfizer is feeling the pressure from global campaigners. But it is clear that relying on the voluntary actions of pharmaceutical companies alone will not secure urgently needed access to tests, medicines and vaccines for everyone, everywhere. Only concerted action by governments to force them to share technology, know-how, and intellectual property will achieve this.

“All governments must move to immediately support the proposal of South Africa and India at the World Trade Organisation for a temporary waiver on all COVID-19 medical technologies and they must also insist on the mandatory transfer of vaccine technology to the many competent manufacturers all over the developing world who stand ready to produce the vaccines.”

Oxfam reaction to AstraZeneca’s plan to take profits from the Covid vaccine

November 12, 2021

In response to the announcement that AstraZeneca is to move away from the non-profit model for COVID vaccines, Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager and spokesperson for the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said:

“AstraZeneca is breaking its repeated and celebrated public promises of a non-profit vaccine for all countries for the duration of this pandemic and to never to make a profit in any low- and middle-income country from this publicly funded vaccine. It is turning its back on these commitments at a time when the pandemic still rages and 98 per cent of people in the poorest countries are not yet fully vaccinated.

“While AstraZeneca has said the vaccine will remain non-profit for developing nations, we understand that 75 middle-income countries including Indonesia, The Philippines, South Africa and Zimbabwe are excluded from their commitment. AstraZeneca must immediately and unequivocally confirm that it will not profit from any sales of the vaccine for any low or middle-income country whether via bilateral deals or COVAX.

“With the number of people dying from COVID-19 rapidly rising above five million and given the development of this vaccine was 97 per cent funded by taxpayers and charities there can be no justification for this decision.

“It is time for the Oxford University to partner with the World Health Organisation so that this life-saving publicly funded vaccine technology can be shared as a global public good and produced by as many capable manufacturers around the world as possible.

“Broken promises from pharmaceutical corporations and rich country governments have been an enduring theme of this pandemic when it comes to vaccine access. This is a further example of why the UK government can no longer defend the pharmaceutical monopolies driving today’s vaccine apartheid. It must immediately join over 100 countries including President Biden in supporting a temporary suspension of intellectual property for Covid-19 vaccines, tests and treatments so that everybody can be protected.”

Oxfam reacts to World Health Organisation announcement on Covaxin

November 4, 2021

In response to the announcement that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has granted emergency use for the COVID-19 vaccine, Covaxin, developed by Bharat Biotech in India, People’s Vaccine Alliance spokesperson and Oxfam Health Policy Manager, Anna Marriott, said:

“Another approved vaccine to fight COVID-19 is fantastic news. We strongly encourage Bharat Biotech to show pandemic leadership and do the right thing for humanity by agreeing to share the vaccine technology and rights with the WHO’s COVID Technology Access Pool, so that more manufacturers around the world can produce them.

“Today’s vaccine apartheid between rich and poor countries has been created by the monopolies of companies like Pfizer and Moderna who have consistently put obscene profits before saving lives and we urge Bharat Biotech not to follow in their footsteps.

“This decision should also silence those who have claimed that the experience and expertise to develop and manufacture life-saving medicines and vaccines do not exist in developing countries. Those claims were wrong for HIV two decades ago, and they are wrong now.”

ILO report a “stark reminder” that vaccine inequality is “economic self-harm”, People’s Vaccine Alliance says

October 27, 2021

Responding to an International Labour Organisation’s report, “ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the World of Work”, campaigners have called global vaccine inequality “a collective act of social and economic self-harm”.

The People’s Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of more than 75 organisations including Oxfam, UNAIDS, Global Justice Now, and Amnesty International, is calling on governments to support a waiver of intellectual property rules on COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments at the World Trade Organisation, and to pressure pharmaceutical companies to share the technology and know-how behind their vaccines with the World Health Organisation.

Commenting on behalf of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, Alex Maitland, Oxfam’s Private Sector Senior Advisor:

“This report is a stark reminder that allowing COVID-19 to run rampant in the Global South is a collective act of social and economic self-harm that devastates jobs, businesses, and communities across the world. Women and young people have borne the brunt of job losses while pharmaceutical companies have reaped billions from vaccine monopolies.

“Governments like the UK and Germany, who are defending vaccine patents at all costs, must stop holding up the global recovery. If they want to avoid an ever-deepening global jobs crisis, they need to waive intellectual property on COVID-19 vaccines and force pharmaceutical companies to share their vaccine technology with the world.”

BioNTech and Moderna’s African vaccine announcements “pittance”, People’s Vaccine Alliance says

October 27, 2021

Vaccine equity campaigners have called news that Covid-19 vaccine manufacturer BioNTech will start building a vaccine production facility in Rwanda next year “far too little; far too late”.

The People’s Vaccine Alliance has also said that Moderna’s new commitment to produce 110 million doses for the African Union as “barely worth the paper it is written on” after the company failed to deliver promised vaccines to COVAX, calling on the US government to step in and mandate the company to commit to technology transfer.

The alliance, a coalition of more than 75 organisations including Oxfam, UNAIDS, Global Justice Now, and Amnesty International, has called on BioNTech and Moderna to share the technology and know-how for its vaccine with the WHO’s Covid-19 technology access pool (C-TAP) and mRNA hub in South Africa.

While the alliance calls more global south manufacturing a “positive development”, it says BioNTech’s offer of 50 million doses from the middle of next year is “pittance” compared to the amount produced in the company’s facilities in Germany.

Reacting to BioNTech’s announcement, Anna Marriott, policy lead for the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said:

“After huge public pressure, BioNTech has finally committed to manufacturing vaccines in the global south. While this is a positive development, it’s far too little, far too late from a company that has made a killing from the pandemic.

“Offering to only start building a facility in Africa in the middle of next year that will then at some point produce just 50 million doses – enough for just 2 per cent of the continent’s population – is a pittance when just one of their factories in Germany produces more than that each month.

“If BioNTech really wants to change the course of this pandemic, it should immediately share the technology and know-how for this publicly-funded innovation with the WHO’s technology pool and mRNA hub in South Africa, so that more developing country manufacturers can produce these game-changing vaccines.”

Reacting to Moderna’s announcement, Anna Marriott, policy lead for the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said:

“After having so far delivered zero of their committed doses to COVAX, this new Moderna Memorandum of Understanding with the African Union to at some point deliver 110 million more vaccines is barely worth the paper it is written on.

“This is a publicly funded vaccine and should be available to all as a public good. It is beyond time that the US government step in and insist the vaccine technology is shared immediately with the WHO mRNA technology hub.”

Notes

Read The People’s Vaccine Alliance full report: “A Dose of Reality: How rich countries and pharmaceutical corporations are breaking their vaccine promises“.

A report last month from Amnesty International found that large pharmaceutical companies, including BioNTech and Moderna, were fuelling an unprecedented human rights crisis through their refusal to waive intellectual property rights and share vaccine technology.

COVID-19 recovery in West Africa is “austerity on steroids” and sets the region on a destructive path ahead: Oxfam

October 14, 2021

Austerity, spiralling debt and vaccine inequity will bring the inequality crisis to levels never reached before, reveals new index.

West African governments are planning to “slash and burn” their way out of COVID-19 induced economic loss, reveals new analysis from Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI) today. The organizations are calling for an urgent change of course as West African governments are preparing their annual budgets and participating in the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF, which are crucial discussions to focus the recovery on fighting inequality and poverty.

The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index (CRII) shows that 14 out of 16 West African nations intend to cut their national budgets by a combined $26.8 billion over the next five years in an effort to partly plug the $48.7 billion lost in 2020 alone across the entire region due to the pandemic. Such austerity has been encouraged by the IMF, through its COVID-19 loans.

This massive raid on public finances could push millions more West Africans into poverty and hunger and potentially trigger the worst inequality crisis in decades. Women will be impacted more severely due to their very high concentration in low paid informal jobs and unpaid care work. Meanwhile, the collective net worth of West Africa’s three wealthiest men surged by $6.4 billion in the first 17 months of the pandemic ―enough to lift 18 million people out of extreme poverty.

“This plan is austerity on steroids,” said Oxfam’s West Africa Regional Director Assalama Dawalak Sidi. “Rather than investing toward a positive new future for the people of West Africa, the region’s governments are instead reaching back to a 1980s playbook ―despite it being a hugely discredited one. The danger is that these governments will cut their way into worsening poverty and skyrocketing inequality.”

“This comes at a time when the region has lost the equivalent of seven million jobs, infection rates are increasing, there is no vaccine in sight for the vast majority of people and the Sahel is facing one of its worst hunger crisis,” said Sidi. “This is not the time for governments to be ripping away the public goods, support and services that millions of people need.”

The index ranks 15-member states of the Economic Community of West African States and Mauritania (ECOWAS+) on their policies on public services, tax, workers’ rights, smallholder agriculture and pandemic response spending, all areas pivotal to reducing inequality and weathering the COVID-19 storm.

The index highlights that West African governments are again the least committed to reducing inequality in Africa. Most support measures in response to COVID-19 were temporary and did little to reduce inequality, while triggering a sharp increase in debt ―debt servicing in 2020-2021 will siphon off about 61.7 percent of government revenue in West Africa. The support programs have been replaced with austerity measures as COVID-19 infection rates are increasing in many countries of the region. Less than 4 percent of West Africans are fully vaccinated.

Sierra Leone ranks low (13th) on the index. Its government was trying to implement anti-inequality policies before COVID and sharply increased education and health spending. But large corporations pocketed 92 percent of government pandemic support funding, while only 1.5 percent was spent on social protection. Sierra Leone’s $860 million upcoming spending cuts (2022-26) are equivalent to two and a half times its annual healthcare budget.

Nigeria was the region’s worst performing country in tackling inequality going into the pandemic. Nigeria’s health budget (as a percentage of its overall budget) is the third lowest in the world (3.6 percent) and 40 percent of its population does not have access to healthcare services. Nigeria loses $2.9 billion a year from tax incentives to corporations but in 2021 increased value-added taxes (VAT), which apply to everyday products like food and clothing and fall disproportionately on poor people, from 5 percent to 7.5 percent.

Mali has the highest level of income equality among ECOWAS countries with a tax rate on the richest people that is 9% higher than the world average. But it ranks last on healthcare spending, devoting less than 5 percent of its annual budget on health. Nearly 38 percent of Mali’s population (8 million people) have no access to healthcare and 6.5 percent of households face catastrophic healthcare costs spending each year. Women’s labor rights are often not respected and they lack legal protection from marital rape and sexual harassment. Mali plans to slash its budget by $3.3 billion over the next five years.

Burkina Faso ranks middle (9th) on the Index. It spends nearly 23% of its budget on education, the highest share in the region and 9th in the world. But the wealthiest 20% of the population has 44% of the income, and in rural areas, 47.5% of the population lives in poverty. According to the IMF, such a level of inequality reduces Gross National Product growth by at least 1% per year. The government plans to cut $1.27 billion through 2026.

If the governments of West Africa were to increase fairly their tax revenue by 1 percent in the next five years, they would raise $56.89 billion. This is more than enough to cancel the planned $26.8 billion budget cuts and build 600 fully-equipped hospitals across West Africa.

Matthew Martin, Director of Development Finance International, said: “West Africa is at a crossroads. Will the region come out of COVID-19 with policies which exacerbate inequality, or implement a recovery plan that works for everyone and not only for the privileged few?”

“The pandemic has taught us it is urgent to invest massively in public education, health and social protection and to use more progressive taxation of income and wealth to pay for this. We also need to increase worker’s rights ― especially for women who disproportionately take on the most precarious jobs.”

Notes

Download Oxfam and DFI’s index “The West Africa Inequality Crisis: Fighting Austerity and the Pandemic” and country profiles.

Oxfam and DFI published in 2019 the first “West African Commitment to Reduce Inequality (CRI) index” showing that West African governments were the least engaged across the continent in reducing inequality.

Download “Adding Fuel to Fire: How IMF Demands for Austerity Will Drive Up Inequality Around the World” for more in-depth analysis on austerity measures encouraged by the IMF through its COVID-19 loans. Between March 1, 2020 and March 15, 2021, all countries in West Africa received IMF emergency support to respond to the pandemic through various types of loans. For more information on austerity measures encouraged in the loans received by West African countries refer to Annex 1 and Annex 2 of the report.