Had governments listened to the science and shared vaccines equitably with the world, an estimated 1.3 million lives could have been saved in the first year of the vaccine rollout alone, or one preventable death every 24 seconds. That those lives were not saved is a scar on the world’s conscience, said a letter signed by 200 signatories calling on governments to never again “profiteering and nationalism” come before the needs of humanity, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Instead of distributing vaccines, tests, and treatments based on need, companies sold doses to the “richest countries with the deepest pockets”, the letter says.
The inequity led to 1.3 million preventable deaths worldwide, according to an analysis based on a study published in the Lancet, according to The Guardian.
The letter, signed by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, the former first lady of South Africa and Mozambique Graça Machel and former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and coordinated by the People’s Vaccine Alliance, comes on the third anniversary of the declaration by the WHO that the coronavirus outbreak had become a pandemic.
In the scathing open letter, published on 11 March, current and former presidents and ministers, Nobel laureates, faith leaders, heads of civil society organisations and health experts say Covid-19 vaccines and treatments had been developed with public funding but that pharmaceutical companies had exploited them to “fuel extraordinary profits”, The Guardian reported.
"As the world pauses to remember the lives and livelihoods lost to three years of COVID-19, we ask world leaders to pledge – 'never again,' ” the letter said.
"Never again will the lives of people in wealthy countries be prioritised over the lives of people in the Global South. Never again will publicly funded science be locked behind private monopolies. Never again will a company’s desire to make extraordinary profits come before the needs of humanity," it said.
Behind Covid-19 vaccines, treatments and tests were decades of publicly funded research. "These are the people’s vaccines, the people’s tests, and the people’s treatments. Yet, a handful of pharmaceutical companies has been allowed to exploit these public goods to fuel extraordinary profits, increasing prices in the Global North while refusing to share technology and knowledge with capable researchers and producers in the Global South," the letter noted.
Instead of rolling out vaccines, tests, and treatments based on need, pharmaceutical companies maximized their profits by selling doses first to the richest countries with the deepest pockets. Billions of people in low and middle-income countries, including frontline workers and the clinically vulnerable, were sent to the back of the line, the letter further added.