'Spreading the ability to develop vaccines will save lives and keep us all safer.' Photo: by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash
Eye on the needle: Nottingham clerks on vaccine access
‘It is morally important to vaccinate the whole world’
It is morally important to vaccinate the whole world as fully and as quickly as possible against Covid-19. Millions are suffering because of lack of fair access to vaccines.
This is also in our own interests, as it would reduce worldwide deaths, serious illness and excessive strains on health systems. It would also inhibit dangerous new mutations of Covid.
Right now it is vital that as many vaccine doses as possible are provided to low- and medium-income countries. In the longer term, we need to help low- and medium-income countries build facilities to develop and produce vaccines, so they are not dependent on handouts from rich countries.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) can give patent-free access to medicines, including vaccines, by agreeing to waive the relevant intellectual property rights via a ‘TRIPS waiver’, as was done for HIV treatment. Low- and medium-income countries could then manufacture and supply vaccines themselves.
South Africa and India – both with high-quality vaccine production facilities – requested a TRIPS waiver on Covid-19 vaccines in October 2020. This has not yet been approved despite support from most countries, including the USA. The UK and the EU are among the small number of WTO members blocking progress.
Pharmaceutical companies claim that a temporary waiver would discourage further development of new vaccines. But – as with HIV – these companies seem to be making large profits from sales to high-income countries, which a TRIPS waiver would not necessarily affect. Furthermore, much of the cost of developing Covid-19 vaccines, and of the underlying technologies, was met by governments, not by the companies.
We shall surely see future pandemics that will need new vaccines. Spreading the ability to develop vaccines will save lives and keep us all safer. We ask all Friends to support urgently access to Covid-19 vaccine patents, and to do all we can to influence our political leaders to help bring this about. Now is the time to redouble our efforts, individually and, more importantly, collectively.
We believe that we should call on the UK government to: immediately increase the number of vaccines made available for distribution to low- and medium-income countries; immediately support the appropriate WTO waiver so that the intellectual property rights of Covid-19 vaccines are waived; and work with and support companies producing Covid-19 vaccines to transfer speedily the necessary technical knowledge to low- and medium-income countries.
We call on individual Quakers and Meetings to contact MPs and the media to publicise our requests, and to ask them to support this campaign as a matter of the utmost urgency; and on Meeting for Sufferings and Britain Yearly Meeting staff for support through press releases and their contacts with the UK parliament.
