On equity vaccines and Covax, WHO rejects and accuses rich countries and Big Pharma
68.3% of the global population has received at least one dose of the vaccine, of which only 23.3% are in low-income countries and about 30 nations have vaccinated less than 10% of their citizens. The cause of the iniquity lies in the greed of rich countries and Big Pharma. Word of WHO
“We failed because of the greed of the North [of the world, ed ]”. This is the admission of Mike Ryan, head of health emergencies at the World Health Organization (WHO), speaking of the inequality of vaccines that persists between the North and the South of the world at the World Health Summit 2022 , one of the main conferences on health which is held annually in Berlin in October.
THE GUILTY
“It is very easy to look at international and multilateral institutions and say that the fault is all there. In this pandemic there are a lot of blame to be attributed, I assure you, ” said Ryan, who among the main culprits pointed to rich countries and pharmaceutical companies.
THE GREED OF RICH COUNTRIES (AND BIG PHARMA)
The greed of rich nations and Big Pharma prevailed and Covax, the WHO-led international program that was supposed to ensure equal access to Covid vaccines in low-income countries, has also failed. Together with the WHO, the UN and the Gavi alliance contributed to its creation in collaboration with Cepi and Unicef.
Ryan does not discount anyone and forces the world health establishment to question itself as well as to remember the dangers of the imbalance of power in public health: “We have failed. Let us ask ourselves why we have failed. We have failed because of the greed of the North, we have failed because of the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, we have failed because of the self-interest of some Member States that they were not willing to share ”.
WHY COVAX DID NOT WORK
And here Ryan's lunge is even more significant because, Quartz recalls, Germany – the country that hosted the conference – was among the nations that sided with pharmaceutical companies in opposing the renunciation of patents for anti-drug drugs. Covid.
"All the failures that have occurred in Covax – said Ryan – occurred because the countries did not want to share, not because the Covax was badly designed".
SOLIDARITY COMPETITION?
From the start, the Covax program was attacked for failing to deliver on its promise to donate vaccines to countries that lacked production capacity or budget.
As can be seen from the table of Our World in Data dating back to Covax data of March 2022, among those who have announced that they want to donate the most there are the United States in first place with 900 million doses, followed by the European Union (526.6 million) and Germany (175 million).
Still according to the table, however, between saying and doing there is the sea. Of the announced doses, 386.30 million doses from the United States, 131.30 million from the EU and 49.50 from Germany, plus those of the other countries below in the graph, would be missing.
Italy, writes Il Foglio , to date "has donated over 58 million doses, of which approximately 53 million through the Covax program".
THE MISSING GOALS AND NUMBERS OF COVAX
Covax's original goal was to deliver two billion vials to the 187 nations involved in the mechanism by 2021, including the 92 poorest on the planet.
So far, we read in Avvenire at the end of August, "1.63 billion doses have been delivered to 146 nations", or "400 million less than those promised and the distribution took place in almost double the expected time".
Political report card that cites more updated data from Our World in Data states that "as of September 22, the doses of vaccine donated by the countries participating in the initiative were over 1.4 billion, but not all of them had been distributed […] The doses actually shipped to low-income countries, on the other hand, there were 880 million ”.
WASTE AND IMBALANCES
According to Our World in Data, 68.3% of the global population has received at least one dose of the vaccine, of which only 23.3% of people are in low-income countries. The obvious imbalances are then observed by looking specifically at some nations.
As Avvenire recalls, in Yemen, for example, only 2.2% of the inhabitants received the first injection, in Congo 4%, in Madagascar 5%. And about 30 countries have vaccinated less than 10% of citizens.
The richest ones, on the other hand, writes the newspaper, "have accumulated a surplus of 1.2 billion doses of which a fifth is likely to end up in the trash if not used as soon as possible".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/su-covax-ed-equita-vaccini-loms-si-boccia-e-accusa-paesi-ricchi-e-big-pharma/ on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 09:08:09 +0000.