AS RICH NATIONS PROTECT CORPORATE PATENTS, THE GLOBAL VACCINE DIVIDE IS
WIDENING
The highest income countries have
gotten over half of global vaccine doses. The poorest countries have gotten
just 0.1 percent.
By Brian Wakamo | March 26, 2021
Originally published in Inequality.org.
We’re a year
into the pandemic, and thanks to vaccines, it appears we may finally have an
end in sight. But, as is too often the case, vaccine distribution has been
anything but equitable.
People in
rich countries, such as the United States and countries in the European Union,
are receiving a far larger share of vaccine doses relative to their share of
the global population, according to analysis from Agence
France-Presse. Meanwhile, the poorest countries are left waiting in
despair as Covid-19 cases continue to rise.
Of the more
than 455 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines that have been injected, people in
in high-income countries have received 56 percent — far more than their 16
percent share of the global population.
People in
the 29 lowest-income countries have received only 0.1 percent of vaccines,
despite making up nine percent of the global population.
Inequality.org
/ Tableau
The World
Health Organization is sounding the alarm on this inequality.
“The
inequitable distribution of vaccines is not just a moral outrage,” said WHO
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a press
conference this week, “it’s also economically and epidemiologically
self-defeating.”
There are
many reasons for this growing inequity. One is that rich nations used their
wealth to jump to the front of the line and purchase as many doses as possible.
As one Yale epidemiologist described it, “It
was like a run on toilet paper,” with rich countries barging their way through
to snap up limited doses like customers did with Charmin at the start of the
pandemic.
Another
major factor is that Western nations joined up with pharma giants to invest in
vaccine development and are protecting corporate patent monopolies. According
to leaked documents, the United States, the UK, and the European Union are
shamefully blocking
further cooperation within the WHO to open up vaccine access.
Global
health advocates and nations like South Africa and India are pushing for a
waiver in WTO intellectual property rules that would allow expanded global
vaccine production and quicker end to the pandemic.
If we are
really serious about ending this pandemic as swiftly as possible, it is
imperative that these patents are opened up. Corporate profits are not more
important than the lives of millions of poor people around the globe.
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Brian Wakamo is a research analyst on the
Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. You can follow him
on Twitter at @brian_wakamo.
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