Farmaceuten en rijke landen leveren maar 1 op de 7 beloofde vaccins aan armere landen

Oxfam Novib/ People’s Vaccine Alliance persbericht 

 Farmaceuten en rijke landen leveren maar 1 op de 7 beloofde vaccins aan armere landen

 Den Haag, 21 oktober. Farmaceuten en rijke landen blijven het delen van coronavaccintechnologie en -recepten blokkeren. Ontwikkelingslanden moeten het doen met een eindeloze stroom aan ontoereikende gebaren en gebroken beloften, afkomstig van rijke landen en farmaceutische bedrijven. Zij slagen er niet in om de miljarden beloofde vaccins te leveren. Van de 1,8 miljard beloofde vaccins zijn slechts 261 miljoen vaccins geleverd. Tegelijkertijd blokkeren zij de echte oplossingen om de wereldwijde coronavaccin-ongelijkheid aan te pakken. Zo stelt de People’s Vaccine Alliance waar Oxfam Novib lid van is, in haar nieuwe rapport vandaag.

In het nieuwe rapport, ‘A dose of Reality’, wordt berekend dat van de 1,8 miljard coronavaccindonaties die door rijke landen zijn beloofd, tot nu toe slechts 261 miljoen doses – 14 procent – zijn geleverd. Westerse farmaceutische bedrijven hebben slechts 12 procent van de doses geleverd die ze aan COVAX hebben toegewezen. COVAX is het VN-initiatief dat is opgericht om lage- en middeninkomenslanden te helpen om meer en eerlijke toegang te krijgen tot coronavaccins.

Oxfam Novib beleidsadviseur Ben van Gils: ‘Nederland heeft 27 miljoen vaccins beloofd voor het COVAX-programma. De teller staat nu pas op een half miljoen geleverde vaccins. Terwijl rijke landen en farmaceuten hun beloftes niet waarmaken, maken we ons in het Westen en ook in Nederland op voor een derde vaccinatieronde, in veel armere landen is nog niet eens 1 procent van de bevolking volledig gevaccineerd.’

Tegelijkertijd hebben de EU, en lidstaten Duitsland en Nederland, geweigerd het voorstel van India, Zuid-Afrika en meer dan 100 landen te steunen om af te zien van patenten op vaccins en COVID-gerelateerde technologieën. Ben van Gils: ‘Er is maar 1 echte oplossing en dat is tijdelijk afstand doen van de intellectuele eigendomsrechten op patenten en het delen van al de nodige kennis en kunde door de farmaceuten. Nederland kan een eerste belangrijke stap zetten door publiekelijk het voorstel van India en Zuid-Afrika te steunen. Want we zijn pas veilig voor corona als iedereen in de wereld veilig is. ‘

Zie voor meer informatie onderstaand Engelstalig persbericht en bijgevoegde briefing. 

Oxfam/People’s Vaccine Alliance press release

Pharmaceutical companies and rich nations delivering just one in seven of the doses promised for developing countries

Firms and rich nations continue to block moves to share vaccine technology and recipes

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.

The report, “A Dose of Reality,” found that of the 1.8 billion COVID vaccine donations promised by rich nations only 261 million doses – 14 per cent – have been delivered to date, while western pharmaceutical companies have delivered only 12 per cent of the doses they allocated to COVAX, the initiative designed to help low- and middle-income countries get fair access to COVID vaccines.

At the same time, the EU and other rich nations have refused to support the proposal of over 100 nations to waive patents on vaccines and COVID related technologies while leading pharmaceutical companies have failed to openly share their technology with the World Health Organisation to enable developing countries to make their own vaccines and save lives.

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, said: “Rich nations and corporations are shamefully failing to deliver on their promises whilst blocking the actual solution; ensuring developing nations have the ability to make their own vaccines.

“It is painfully clear that the developing world cannot rely on the largesse and charity of rich nations and pharmaceutical companies, and hundreds of thousands of people are dying from COVID-19 as a result. This is beyond appalling.”

The UK Government, which has been actively blocking calls from countries like South Africa and India to be allowed to make their own vaccines, has only delivered 9.6 million – less than 10 per cent - of the 100 million doses it promised to poorer nations. Meanwhile it has itself taken half a million doses from COVAX, despite extreme vaccine shortages in developing countries and having already secured more than enough doses for British people from direct deals with the pharmaceutical companies. Canada has taken over 970,000 doses from COVAX, while delivering only 3.2 million – or 8 per cent – of the 40 million doses it promised. Germany, another country blocking the waiver, has delivered 12 per cent of the 100 million doses it promised and France has delivered just 9 per cent of the 120 million it promised. The US has delivered the most doses - nearly 177 million doses – however this is just 16 per cent of the 1.1 billion promised.

The Alliance said that while COVAX failed to acknowledge that relying on pharmaceutical companies may not deliver doses, the companies have undermined the initiative, first by not allocating it enough doses and second by delivering far less than they agreed. Of the 994 million doses allocated to COVAX by Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Oxford/AstraZeneca, and Pfizer/BioNTech, only 120 million -12 per cent- have actually been delivered, which is fifteen times less than the 1.8 billion doses delivered to rich countries from these companies. Both Johnson & Johnson and Moderna are yet to deliver a single dose they promised to the initiative.

Oxfam’s Robbie Silverman said: “The failure of rich country donations and the failure of COVAX have the same root cause – we have given over control of vaccine supply to a small number of pharmaceutical companies, who are prioritising their own profits.

“These companies can’t produce enough to vaccinate the world, they are artificially constraining the supply, and they will always put their rich customers at the front of the line. 

“The only way to end the pandemic is to share the technology, and know-how with other qualified manufacturers so that everyone, everywhere can have access to these lifesaving vaccines.”

During the UN General Assembly in September, President Biden rallied support for the goal to vaccinate 70 per cent of people in every country by September of 2022. While this target is rightly ambitious, the People’s Vaccine Alliance says it should be achieved much more quickly, and there is still no plan to achieve it.

The WHO stated that it must be a global priority to get doses to developing countries by the end of this year, but the Alliance says rich countries are not listening and working to a timetable of delivering an inadequate supply of doses by some time in 2022, which is likely to lead to countless unnecessary deaths.

Maaza Seyoum, of the African Alliance and People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa, said: “Across the world health workers are dying and children are losing parents and grandparents. With ninety-nine per cent of people in low-income countries still not vaccinated, we have had enough of these too little too late gestures.

“Governments must stop allowing pharmaceutical companies to play god while raking in astronomical profits and start delivering actual action that will save lives.”

To deflect growing pressure to share their vaccine technology free of intellectual property restrictions leading western pharmaceutical corporations have consistently over-exaggerated their projected production volumes, claiming there will soon be enough for everyone while delivering the overwhelming majority of their stock to rich nations. Collectively, the four companies claimed they would manufacture an estimated 7.5 billion vaccines in 2021, yet with less than three months until the end of the year, they have only delivered half of these. Forecasts suggest the companies will produce 6.2 billion vaccines by the end of the year, a shortfall on their projections of more than 1.3 billion doses.

With a week to go before leaders meet for the G20 summit in Rome, The People’s Vaccine Alliance - which has 77 members including ActionAid, the African Alliance, Global Justice Now, Oxfam and UNAIDS – is calling on them to stop breaking their promises to vaccinate the world and to:

• Suspend intellectual property rights for COVID vaccines, tests, treatments, and other medical tools by agreeing to the proposed waiver of the TRIPS Agreement at the World Trade Organisation.
• Demand, and use all their legal and policy tools to require pharmaceutical companies to share COVID-19 data, know-how, and technology with the WHO’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool and South Africa mRNA Technology Transfer Hub.
• Invest in decentralised manufacturing hubs in developing countries to move from a world of vaccine monopolies and scarcity to one of vaccine sufficiency and fairness in which developing countries have direct control over production capacity to meet their needs.
• Immediately redistribute existing vaccines equitably across all nations to achieve the WHO target of vaccinating 40 per cent of people in all countries by the end of 2021 and 70 per cent of people in all countries by mid-2022.

/Ends

Notes to editors:

The headline stats that rich nations have only delivered 14 per cent of promised doses refers to doses donated by the G7 and ‘Team Europe’ which includes the EU, Norway and Iceland.

So far COVAX has received directly from pharmaceutical companies:

• 104 million (14 per cent) of the 720 million doses promised by Oxford/AstraZeneca
• 16 million (40 per cent) of the 40 million promised by Pfizer/BioNTech
• Zero doses of the 200 million promised by Johnson & Johnson
• and zero doses of the 30 million promised by Moderna

Only 1.3 per cent of people in Low Income Countries are fully vaccinated.

Airfinity forecast that Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Oxford/AstraZeneca, and Pfizer/BioNTech will produce 6.2 billion doses by the end of the year, a 17 per cent shortfall of the original forecasts, which translates into more than 1.3 billion missing vaccine doses.