Pandemic profiteering and refusal to share vaccines equitably

 Emeritus Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
Opinion - New Straits Times
September 7, 2021 

WHAT many feared would happen has now been proven true. The British Medical Journal (BMJ) in its Aug 16 issue carried a revelation entitled: "Companies and rich nations are creating a deadly Covid-19 vaccine protection racket."

The article is authored by the Health Justice Initiative director (Cape Town, South Africa) and BMJ executive director (United Kingdom), together with the professor of global health and public policy at Center for Policy Impact in Global Health, Duke Global Health Institute, Duke University (North Carolina, United States).

The finding and impact are so profound that it must be shared with the public. And, BMJ has made the article freely available.

In a nutshell, the article documented evidence of a named pharmaceutical company making revenue to the tune of US$3.5 billion.

"Other companies are also making exceptional profits from Covid-19," it asserted.

Each of these vaccine manufacturers is reportedly free "to raise the price once it considers the pandemic to be over".

BMJ writes, "pandemic profiteering is, in our view, a human rights violation that demands investigation and scrutiny, quoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right 'to share in scientific advancement and its benefits'."

Such advancement is intended to accelerate development of effective Covid-19 vaccines that lower the chances of severe illness and death.

Despite this, vaccine manufacturers and their chief executives have worked with a group of powerful leaders to amass doses. As early as September last year, around 30 rich nations cleared the world's shelves of doses through advanced purchase orders, leading to "vaccine apartheid".

Some unashamedly purchased enough doses to vaccinate citizens many times over. It is envisaged that by the end of this year, "rich nations will be sitting on one billion unused doses", even though some poorer countries have not yet received the paid-for vaccines.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general has called this global vaccine inequity "grotesque", a recipe for seeding viral variants capable of escaping vaccines, and a "moral outrage".

Unfortunately, the rich world is refusing to share vaccines with poorer countries speedily or equitably. A clear example is when 60 per cent of the population in the UK is fully vaccinated, while in Uganda, it is only one per cent.

Furthermore, the 50 least wealthy nations, home to 20 per cent of the world's population, have received just two per cent of all vaccine doses.

When WHO wants rich nations to halt booster vaccination and instead send doses to the less wealthy nations, the expectation is not met, instead "boosters" were recommended to jack up existing revenues.

Oxfam has accused the G20 rich nations of putting relations with pharmaceutical companies ahead of ending the pandemic.

BMJ questioned: "Where is the redress for decisions that deny intellectual property waivers and withhold manufacturing knowledge — decisions that led to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in disadvantaged countries?"

As a result, vaccine preventable deaths and illness occurring across Africa, Asia, and Latin America are left at an unprecedented speed and scale, "being outmanoeuvred by rich nations flexing their market power".

According to the article, contrary to claims, it is possible to make enough vaccines for the world.

To make it worse, some vaccine-rich countries are allegedly now destroying excess, unused doses, while some have imposed export bans and restrictions to protect their stockpiles.

It is shocking that it can happen in this day and age, and more so at a moment when humanity is at a tipping point in the fight against the deadly invisible enemy.

It points to yet another invisible enemy driven "at the whim of big pharma and popularity politics in the West", all at the expense of the rest of the world.

The writer, an NST columnist for more than 20 years, is International Islamic University Malaysia rector