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For Amnesty International, pharmaceutical companies have not been up to the historic global health and human rights crisis. The NGO accuses them of ‘monopolizing technology’, ‘opposing the sharing of intellectual property’, ‘billing vaccines at high prices’ and ‘not selling them to poor countries’. Only 4% of people living in countries with limited income had received a complete schedule of the vaccine at the end of 2021, according to its latest report.
“By failing to guarantee equal access to vaccines, pharmaceutical companies have contributed to the human rights catastrophe in 2021”, that is the devastating accusation of Amnesty International in its report ‘When money rules: The response of pharmaceutical companies to the Covid-19 vaccine crisis’.
Public authorities have invested billions of dollars in research to achieve vaccines against Covid-19, but the companies that have developed them have acted for their benefit, AI denounces. “These companies could have been the heroes of 2021, instead they turned their backs on the people who most needed the vaccine and have simply continued to do business as usual, prioritizing their benefits to humans,” said Rajat Khosla, General Director of Research at Amnesty International.
In 2021, Pfzer/BioNTech and Moderna have projected profits of up to 54,000 million dollars, recalls the NGO, and only 2% of their vaccines have been sent to low-income countries. Sinova and Sinopharm have not even reached 2%, 0.5% and 1.5% respectively. Other companies such as Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca have allocated 50% of their stocks to poor or moderate-income countries, but much of it was donated by third countries. AI also criticizes the refusal to share technology and intellectual property.
Last year, 10,000 million doses of vaccines against COVID-19 were produced, more than enough to reach the 40% global vaccination target set by the World Health Organization (WHO), but only 4% of the population of low-income countries have received it. “If we want 70% of the world’s population to be vaccinated by mid-2022, pharmaceutical companies must prioritize poor countries,” said Rajat Khosla.
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