People in poorer countries continue to die from Covid-19 amid 'racist' vaccine inequality

There is criticism of delays in negotiating the TRIPS Waiver process which would give developing countries temporary access to intellectual property around Covid vaccines.

Inequalities in vaccine access across the world have been linked to racism, as thousands still die from Covid-19 in developing countries while EU governments fail to reform systems.

The People’s Vaccine Alliance Ireland met yesterday to discuss growing concerns around access to vaccines across the world. 

Founder of the Health Justice Initiative in South Africa, Fatima Hassan, said: “Frankly our lives matter less.” 

Vaccines are now easily available to 75-year-old Irish people but not to 75-year-olds in African countries she said, describing it as a “whitewash”.

Wealthy countries first

She said people in South Africa took part in clinical trials but the financial benefits of vaccinating wealthy countries first meant the country did not see similar quick access.

Referring to delays in negotiating the TRIPS Waiver process which would give developing countries temporary access to intellectual property around Covid vaccines, she criticised the “complete failure of the WTO [World Trade Organisation] to actually get us out of this pandemic”.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins said lack of support from the Irish Government for this process is embarrassing.

The Seanad voted unanimously in favour of her motion calling for a TRIPS Waiver in December, she said.

“Unfortunately despite that message from one of our houses of parliament, [Enterprise] Minister Varadkar has continued to champion the intellectual property argument,” she said.

I think quite embarrassingly we had Mr Varadkar saying that he didn’t want countries to take advantage of the pandemic to loosen intellectual property laws. I think that was a really shameful message for Ireland to send. 

She called for a return to the solidarity seen during the early stages of the pandemic.

“Every kind of small business has made sacrifices for public health reasons, yet these very large companies, this handful of companies, have not been asked to make any equivalent sacrifice at all,” she said.

The Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment discussed the TRIPS Waiver recently and wrote to the Tánaiste asking him to agree a Government position supporting this.

Assistant professor at LSE Law School Dr Luke McDonagh discussed links between public funding and vaccine development, including by AstraZeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech, and Moderna.

“There is certainly a role for the private sector in scaling up production at a time of massive public emergency,” he said. “But it certainly isn’t the case that private activities were the sole reason why these vaccines were invented in the first place.” 

Removing patents

Pharmaceutical companies previously defended their stance, saying they provide support in other ways and that removing patents could put vaccine safety at risk.

During the Omicron wave of infections the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker found “in countries that reached the highest levels of vaccination, death rates plummeted". 

It shows 11m doses given in Ireland but that Sudan, with a population of 43m, has given 7.1m doses.