Oxfam and Peoples Vaccine Alliance response to Lancet Commission report on lessons from COVID-19 for future pandemics

“The Lancet Commission details the utter failure of rich country leaders and pharmaceutical companies to ensure the tools needed to end this pandemic were accessible to everyone, everywhere. The findings of this commission should shame the international community. Nationalism, racism, profiteering, and an overreaching intellectual property system all prevented lower-income countries from accessing or producing vaccines.

“It is vital that we learn the lessons of this report, end pharma’s deadly monopolies and build more capacity for the development and manufacturing of vaccines, tests and treatments in low and middle-income countries. Governments need to act immediately to extend an agreement made earlier this year on overriding COVID-19 vaccine patents to cover lifesaving treatments and tests. And they must safeguard World Health Organisation backed efforts to produce mRNA vaccine manufacturing on every continent from the threat of litigation from companies like Moderna. The pandemic treaty currently under discussion needs to make clear that saving lives must come before profits and decisions about who lives and who dies are never again outsourced to the CEOs of big pharma.”

/ Ends

Notes to Editors:

For more information, or to arrange an interview, please contact: Sarah Dransfield, Oxfam Senior Press Officer, on: +44 (0)7884 114825 / sdransfield@oxfam.org.uk or media@peoplesvaccine.org

Read the Lancet Commission report here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01585-9/fulltext

Read more about how Moderna’s patents threaten the WHO-backed South African mRNA hub: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-13/groups-ask-ramaphosa-to-protect-mrna-use-against-moderna-patents