If pharmaceutical companies share their knowledge and technology, other companies can produce COVID-19 vaccines, and we can end the pandemic with no one left behind. Take action now, and call on pharma to play ball so that everyone has a fair shot at a COVID-19 vaccine.
Everyone in the world should have access to a COVID-19 vaccine, no matter who they are or where they are from. Access could mean the difference between life and death for years to come. And yet, on current trends, leading pharmaceutical companies won’t deliver enough vaccines for even a fraction of the world’s population this year. On top of this, poorer countries are at the back of the queue.
Billions of dollars of taxpayer’s money have been spent to help companies like AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer BioNTech to develop and produce vaccines. These vaccines belong to the people and must be shared.
One way that companies can do this is by joining the World Health Organisation’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), designed to pool resources between companies. So far, no company has joined it.
It’s time to put people’s lives first. Let’s use our power in numbers to show pharma companies that we want them to live up to their human rights responsibilities by sharing their knowledge and technology and joining C-TAP now.
Twenty years ago, millions of people gained access to life-saving HIV treatment after leading pharma companies allowed others to produce low-cost ‘generic’ versions of HIV medicines. The way that pharmaceutical companies guard or share their knowledge and technology right now impacts how and when we end COVID-19.