Why are they calling for vaccine internationalism?

According to PI, we are dealing with a vaccine apartheid. Eighty-five percent of vaccines that have been administered worldwide have been in high- and upper-middle-income countries. Only 0.3% of doses have been administered in low-income countries. If we continue at this pace the pandemic will continue to rip through the Global South leaving the whole world highly vulnerable as the virus continues to mutate for another 57 years.

As noted in a recent blog from Ciara Regan, the G7 has pledged 1 billion vaccine doses that will primarily go through COVAX, but this number has already fallen to 870 million, of which only around 613 million does are newly pledged.  The leaders on the Summit for Vaccine Internationalism have said this simply not enough. Summit coordinator and Progressive International cabinet member Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla said:

We have the capacity to end this pandemic, producing and distributing Covid-19 vaccines for all. And yet the end is nowhere in sight. A nexus of Big Pharma and Global North governments is standing in the way. The system of pharmaceutical patents at the World Trade Organization that was designed to prioritize corporate profit over human life.

In an article featured on the Guardian, Rogelio Mayta, KK Shailaja and Anyang’ Nyong’o, who participated in the summit said,

every vaccine has two elements: the legal rights to make the vaccine, and the knowledge about how to make it. If vaccine recipes are shared – and the opportunity to produce them is provided – then we can adapt our factories to produce the vaccines required.

Countries participating in the summit including Kenya, India and Bolivia, have said that they “will consider investing in public industry in each of our nations and equipping our factories to produce the vaccines required, not only for our own countries but for each other.”