Big pharma fuelling human rights crisis over Covid vaccine inequity – Amnesty

Rights and freedomVaccines and immunisationBig pharma fuelling human rights crisis over Covid vaccine inequity – AmnestySix companies warned not to put profit before lives as report shows less than 1% of almost 6bn doses have gone to low-income countries Rights and freedom is supported byAbout this contentSarah JohnsonWed 22 Sep 2021 06.46 EDTLast modified on Wed 22 Sep 2021 07.24 EDTAmnesty International has accused six pharmaceutical companies that have developed Covid-19 vaccines of fuelling a global human rights crisis, citing their refusal to sufficiently waive intellectual property rights, share vaccine technology and boost global vaccine supply.After assessing the performance of six Covid-19 vaccine developers – Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Novavax – Amnesty International claims that all are failing to uphold their own human rights commitments and warns they should not be putting profit before the lives of people in the world’s poorest countries.Less than 1% of the almost 6bn doses of Covid vaccine administered worldwide have gone to low-income countries, with almost 80% delivered to wealthy countries. Despite calls to ensure a fair global vaccine supply, some companies have continued to disproportionally distribute vaccines to wealthy countries, according to Amnesty’s report, published today.Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said: “Big pharma’s intentional blocking of knowledge transfer and their wheeling and dealing in favour of wealthy states has brewed an utterly devastating vaccine scarcity for so many others.”Callamard said: “[These companies’] actions are plunging parts of …

22/09/2021