The current health crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic has turned many countries, especially the poorest, into “hostages” of pharmaceutical companies, imposing prices, enforcing dose delivery times and even demanding legal immunity, they said at a conference today. denounced. from various NGOs.
“For example, many Latin American governments are at the mercy of pharmaceutical companies and forced to accept any condition,” said Felipe, coordinator of MSF’s campaign for access to essential medicines in Brazil. Carvalho.
Human rights attorney Fatima Hassan, of the Initiative for Sanitary Justice, added that these countries must “accept limited distribution, artificially created deficit, pay the prices they ask for, and also allow secrecy and agreements that exempt from responsibility. “.
De Carvalho emphasized that this situation has led to vaccination campaigns in countries such as Brazil or Mexico being interrupted due to lack of doses, the Brazilian government having paid higher prices than its European counterparts for AstraZeneca vaccines, or the pharmaceutical companies asking Argentina to change its laws in exchange for distributing their vaccines.
This, they warned, is happening in regions with some of the highest death rates from COVID-19 in the world, such as Latin America or Africa, where many health networks and hospitals are collapsing and many workers in the sector are exhausted. have no prospect of being vaccinated in the short term.
The activists signed this black photo to defend the World Trade Organization (WTO) approval of an initiative by India and South Africa to suspend patents on vaccines and other products against COVID-19 so that they can be freely manufactured .
The initiative, which will be debated again in the WTO next week, is supported by many developing countries, but has met backlash from the economies where many of the major medicines are located (the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland, etc.).
“We do not understand why there should be a monopoly in globally needed products, why the distribution of vaccines should be restricted and why fundamental technologies should be exclusively exclusive,” said De Carvalho at the press conference hosted by the Association of Correspondents. of United Nations (ACANU).
The drug companies say they should recoup the millionaire investment they’ve made in researching anticovid vaccines, although NGO representatives assured that much of the money came from government subsidies.
“They let them monopolize the benefits when they get over $ 93,000 million from the various governments, I don’t know what else they need,” said KMGopakumar of the Third World Network organization.
The MSF representative assured that governments have invested more than twice as much money as pharmaceutical companies in vaccines, treatments and other anti-pandemic tools, pointing out that these companies avoid disclosing exact figures about their research funds “because if they did. we would see that they are not the main drivers of innovation. “
The activists also recalled that many countries rely on international donations of anticovid vaccines organized by the COVAX network (supported by the World Health Organization) to achieve their doses, but that even this humanitarian arm has less bargaining power than richer countries.
“In Latin America, many countries have sent money to COVAX, but they do not yet have information on when they will receive doses, in what amounts or at what price,” de Carvalho complained.