'This is not about aid, it's about solidarity and valuing human life'

International row over vaccines hits close to home for migrants

Majo Rivas, near her home in Cork City.

A little over a year ago I got a call from my sister to say our dad had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. 

I know the prognosis of pancreatic cancer, so I just sat down on the office stairwell and cried. Then, I returned to my desk and continued working.

Then lockdown happened.

It was hard to go through it all without being able to see him and spend time with my family. They are in Paraguay and I am in Cork. I always knew that if something happened I probably wouldn’t be able to make it to the funeral, that’s migrant life. 

But with Coronavirus, Paraguay had mandatory hotel quarantine for all international arrivals, so if I wanted to go I’d spend two weeks in a hotel before seeing my family.

That’s life during a pandemic.

I’ve cried more since then, constantly checking the infection rates of not one but two countries. 

Worrying about loved ones on two sides of the Atlantic is exhausting. 

In Paraguay a few days ago, there were 2,028 new cases in a single day. 

Bear in mind the healthcare system there is shaky, a quarter of the population lives in poverty and there is no social welfare system to speak of, so people either go out and work, chance infecting themselves and others, or risk hunger.

Well-intentioned people ask me how my family is doing, and tell me they hope I can see them soon, but it’s not that simple. 

I may get my vaccine in Ireland late this year, but the available evidence suggests that vaccinated people could potentially still get Covid-19 and spread it to others.

Realistically, as much as I’d love to see my mam, and hug my nephews and nieces, this may not be possible until they and everyone around them are vaccinated, too. 

People from Europe travelling to the Global South and spreading disease is not something I’d like to replicate. 

But here is the toughest thing of it all: It could be a few years before people in Paraguay and other parts of the world can access vaccines. 

There is a finite reserve of vaccines but, like many injustices, this is not an accident — it is a result of policy choices.

The People’s Vaccine Alliance — a network of organisations including Amnesty International, Oxfam, and Global Justice — has analysed the data and found that “wealthier nations have bought enough doses to vaccinate their entire populations nearly three times over”. 

It’s clear that there are issues with production and scaling it up. This is why the People’s Vaccine Alliance is calling on all pharmaceutical corporations to openly share their technology and intellectual property. 

Nor is this only about corporations: the vaccines developed by AstraZeneca/Oxford, Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech have received more than $5bn dollars of public funding.

At the World Trade Organisation (WTO), over 100 countries in the Global South urged the WTO to waive the vaccine patents to allow a boost in production of Covid-19 vaccines for poorer nations.

Rich vs poor 

Recently, South Africa and India have again asked that the WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) agreement would be waived, so that more manufacturers could make more vaccines.

However, richer countries are opposing this measure. The United Kingdom, Switzerland, EU nations and the United States, which have large domestic pharmaceutical industries, are blocking this proposal. 

So, while vaccines received billions in public funding, the EU, acting in our name, is now refusing to waive TRIPS to allow more vaccines to be produced. 

So many lives lost, treated as disposable. This is done in our names and with our taxes.

On a personal level, it is incredibly painful to think that the lives of my loved ones are seen as expendable. My mam is in a vulnerable category, and so are three of my siblings. 

I haven’t seen them or hugged them in almost two years. And it may be a few more until I do again, depending on vaccines. 

I can only hope I don’t miss another funeral.

Do not get me wrong: I do not want pity, I do not want sympathy. My ask is that you care, that you are righteously angry, and make it an issue with your elected representatives, with the Irish Government and our elected Members of the European Parliament. 

I also ask you that you sign this European citizens' initiative No profit on pandemic to ensure that the European Commission does everything in its power to make anti-pandemic vaccines and treatments a global public good, freely accessible to everyone.

This is not about “aid”, it is about solidarity and valuing human life. And if we don’t demand this out of decency and respect for human life — because it’s the right thing to do — then let’s do it out of self-preservation.

As Dr Mike Ryan said, none of us are safe until all of us are safe.

Majo Rivas is Paraguayan-Irish and lives in Cork. This article is written in a personal capacity.