Although there was an alternative in the laws for Colombia to purchase monkeypox vaccines, the Ministry of Health – headed by Minister Carolina Corcho – would have overlooked it.
At least this is the argument put forward by the former director of Epidemiology of the previous administration of the Ministry of Health, Julián Fernández. He vehemently assured that the current government has deliberately ignored the possibility of exploring legal mechanisms for purchasing vaccines. All the more so, because other countries such as Peru, Chile and Brazil have already received the doses.
The criticism lies in the fact that Minister Corcho decided not to buy vaccines from the Bavarian Nordic pharmaceutical company, arguing that the law prevented him from doing so.
(Keep reading: They rejoin the Ministry of Health for delays in acquiring vaccines against monkeypox).
Colombia, in fact, is a country with strict health regulations that limit the purchase of medicines that have not been subjected to rigorous evaluation processes by local authorities. That is why in 2020, due to the urgency of addressing the coronavirus pandemic, Congress had to approve an express article that allowed negotiating the acquisition of anticovid vaccines.
The 2064 law of 2020 was the basis of these agreements. Not only did it facilitate the purchase of vaccines, but it also gave the National Government the ability to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies. This is how the country has managed to distribute over 93 million doses of anticovid to date.
However, this law has a detail that prevents the state from doing the same in the face of the international monkeypox health emergency. In the first article, it states that its purpose is to provide tools for “immunizing the Colombian population” against covid-19 and “other pandemics”.
Since monkeypox has not been, and certainly will not be, declared a pandemic, the law fails to empower the state to negotiate vaccines.
This is particularly important because Article 5 of that law eases the responsibilities that pharmaceutical companies have regarding the application of the vaccines they produce. The party says these companies will only be liable for “intentional or grossly negligent acts or omissions”.
That kind of compensation was what the Bavarian Nordic pharmaceutical company was looking for with a clause it included in contracts to negotiate monkeypox vaccines.
Minister Carolina Corcho’s response was that paying attention to the conditions set by the pharmaceutical giant would have meant breaking the law. This is why you ended up asking for the terms of the contract to be renegotiated. Something that, as we have seen, has not borne fruit.
In turn, Fernández’s complaint is that the administration of the former Ministry of Health was already preparing a “plan b” in case the 2064 2020 law was not passed in Congress or took too long to do so.
It is precisely that plan b which, according to Fernández, should have been used in the current situation. This is an article of Law 1753 of 2015, which gave the Ministry of Health the possibility to declare the health emergency and, with it, to take “the necessary actions to overcome the circumstances” that caused it. This strategy was one of the suggestions that were put on the table during the joint meeting between the two administrations. But the recommendation was not accepted.
different viruses
Luis Jorge Hernández, an epidemiologist and public health researcher at the Universidad de Los Andes, said that monkeypox and covid-19 are not comparable viruses.
Although monkeypox has raised international alert, its death rates are much lower and it does not pose the same public health risk in the country.
“The government has made changes and negotiations in the face of a vaccine that does not have the same urgency as that of covid-19,” said Hernández.
In turn, he said that while he felt the Ministry of Health’s response to the virus was adequate, there was a lack of greater communication with the public and academia.
And he concluded that other public health problems that cause more deaths and that don’t get the same attention in the media are also worth paying attention to.
There are already priority patients
This newspaper contacted the Ministry of Health to ask if this legal mechanism was put on the table and why it was not used, but for now there has been no formal response.
What that entity did was publish a statement recalling that it is already handling 25,000 doses of monkeypox vaccines and provided details on who will get them first.
“It is expected that priority will be given to close contacts (about 3 per infected person), to the most vulnerable people: HIV, MSM (men who have sex with men) and other people with risky sexual behavior” The Ministry of Lo said health in a statement.
They stressed, however, that vaccination is not the only protective measure and that other alternatives that have already been communicated in other spaces should be considered – for example avoiding contact with people who appear to be infected and with objects such as clothing. and savannas that may also harbor the virus.
Likewise, they warned that infections have slowed in recent weeks. “There is evidence of a trend towards a decrease in cases in October in both Colombia and the region, compared to the number of cases per week at the start of the outbreak,” they indicated.
Despite everything, the delays in the acquisition of vaccines send chills to organizations that defend the rights of LGBTI communities.
For example, on 24 October, the Somos network launched an alarm bell to Minister Corcho to prioritize the purchase of these doses. “It’s real, it’s happening in Colombia too. We have seen from the Net We are 73 cases, it is painful, the health services are not prepared. We need a vaccine now, “they warned through their Twitter account.
