The campaign, entitled “A dose of equality: for universal access to vaccination covid-19”, starts with a petition, available on the organization's website (https://www.amnistia.pt/peticao/vacina-covid-19), in which it calls on pharmaceutical companies to share their knowledge and technology to maximize the number of doses of covid-19 vaccines worldwide.
According to AI, rich countries bought more than half of the world's supply of vaccines, although they represent only 16 percent of the world's population.
The same countries have administered more than 60 percent of the world's doses so far, while more than 100 countries have not yet vaccinated a single person.
The non-governmental organization (NGO) calls on states to stop engaging in "vaccine nationalism" and work together to ensure that those most at risk of contracting covid-19 in all countries can access vaccines.
The organization recalls that billions of dollars of taxpayer money have been spent to help companies like AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech develop and produce vaccines, but these companies - and others - refuse to share research, knowledge and technology.
This means, according to AI, other pharmaceutical companies cannot take advantage of these advances in science to increase their own vaccine production, which in turn would increase the supply of vaccines so that they are accessible to countries with smaller budgets.
For example, in May 2020, the World Health Organization created the Covid-19 Technology Access Group (Covid-19 Technology Access Pool / C-TAP) so that companies could gather data and knowledge and then license the production and transfer of technology to other potential producers, with the aim of ensuring that people everywhere could have access to vaccines more quickly.
However, until now, no pharmaceutical company has adhered to C-TAP.
The politics of the lowest common denominator again here. AI doesn't know what it's talking about, but using the vaccination to make a political point.
That 100 countries have not yet vaccinated a single person is THEIR problem and should not be used to castigate the rest of us, or hold back efforts to vaccinate elsewhere.
It's their lack of organisation and political will that is preventing vaccination, not the fact that the developed countries have bought the vaccine first. Ultimately there will be enough vaccines to go around. Difficult to expect Third World countries to do anything right, or have any sense of organisation or responsibility.
By Billy Bissett from Porto on 12 Mar 2021, 17:24