pharmaceutical companies - The African Mirror

Jun

2021

Ramaphosa accuses Big Pharma of ‘selfish, unjust’ vaccine policy

TIM COCKS THE "selfish, unjust" refusal of pharmaceutical companies and allied Western governments to entertain emergency patent waivers on COVID-19 vaccines was endangering the entire world, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has said. In unusually impassioned remarks, Ramaphosa lambasted a resistance to calls by India and South Africa for temporary patent waivers to ramp up production. "It is selfish, it is unjust, it is wholly unfair," Ramaphosa, proponent of the waiver, told the opening virtual session of the Qatar Economic Forum, a day after South Africa registered 13,000 new cases in a third COVID-19 wave. "We are facing an emergency…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

‘COVID-19 Billionaires should pay for the poor’

NEWS

NITA BHALLA COVID-19 vaccine profits have created at least nine billionaires whose combined wealth would be enough to inoculate all of the world's poor, a coalition of charities and activists said yesterday, calling for a more equitable distribution of jabs. The new billionaires - who include senior executives from U.S. firm Moderna Inc and China's CanSino Biologics - have a net worth of $19.3 billion between them, according to the People's Vaccine Alliance. That sum would be more than enough to fully vaccinate all the people in low-income countries, the alliance said, urging pharmaceutical companies to end their "monopoly" over…

Apr

2021

By The African Mirror

S.A. calls for vaccine technology transfer

COVID-19

SOUTH's President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on pharmaceutical companies to transfer mRNA vaccine technology to low and middle-income countries "free of intellectual property barriers". Speaking at a virtual World Health Organization (WHO) briefing, Ramaphosa added that vaccine nationalism was seriously threatening the world's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and deepening inequality. "Let us together challenge vaccine nationalism and ensure that protecting intellectual property rights does not come at the expense of human lives," he added.

Jan

2021

By The African Mirror

Enthusiasm over COVID-19 vaccines tempered by talk of protectionism and hoarding

COVID-19

ANDRIUS SYTAS EUROPE has urged pharmaceutical companies to honour their commitments to supply coronavirus vaccines, as delivery cuts and delays dim hopes of a quick fix to COVID-19 and increase talk of protectionism and hoarding. Countries around the world, anxious to reboot economies and restart travel by the European summer, hailed the rapid development of vaccines as the great escape from the year-long pandemic, which has killed more than 2.1 million people. But vaccine roll-outs in the European Union have been slow compared with countries in some other regions and fraught with problems, not least interruptions to supply chains. AstraZeneca,…

Oct

2020

By The African Mirror

Activists urge ‘Big Pharma’ to be transparent on COVID-19 vaccine costs

COVID-19

STEPHANIE NEBEHAY ACTIVISTS called on pharmaceutical companies to be transparent about the costs and terms of providing COVID-19 vaccines, saying they must be available and affordable for all. French drugmaker Sanofi and Britain's GlaxoSmithKline said they would supply 200 million doses of their COVID-19 candidate vaccine to the global COVAX vaccine facility backed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the GAVI vaccine alliance. Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) demanded the two companies provide details around price, supply and distribution of any vaccine proven safe and effective. "Pharmaceutical corporations Sanofi and GSK must sell their vaccines at-cost and open…