The US and German governments have a responsibility to press those companies to share knowledge and technology more widely, Human Rights Watch said. The German government provided significant funding to BioNTech to research and develop its mRNA Covid-19 vaccine with Pfizer. The US government also made advance purchases of Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J’s vaccines. The US National Institutes of Health funded foundational innovations that made Moderna’s and Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccines possible. The US government provided approximately US$1 billion in public funds each to Moderna and J&J, which produces a viral vector vaccine, for Covid-19 vaccine research and development during the pandemic. The overwhelming majority of the BioNTech-Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J vaccines have gone to high-income countries, according to data gathered by Airfinity, a science information and analysis company, and reported by the People’s Vaccine Alliance.Ĭompanies have human rights responsibilities to share their knowledge and technology more widely for speedier pandemic recovery and preparedness, Human Rights Watch said. As of November 29, low-income countries had received just 0.6 percent of the world’s vaccines. The list of potential mRNA manufacturers was compiled by the coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines in India, Brazil, and South Africa, and a vaccine expert from the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF or Doctors Without Borders) Access Campaign.Īccess to Covid-19 vaccines is extremely unequal globally and supply shortages threaten health, lives, and livelihoods as new variants emerge. “The US and German governments should press for wider technology transfers and not let companies dictate where and how lifesaving vaccines and treatments reach much of the world as the virus mutates.”ĭiversifying and scaling up global production in low- and middle-income countries through sharing of knowledge and technology, especially for mRNA vaccines, would help shore up vaccine supplies to leave the world better positioned to collectively respond to the pandemic. “Global vaccine production forecasts suggesting there will soon be enough Covid-19 vaccines for the world are misleading,” said Aruna Kashyap, associate business and human rights director at Human Rights Watch. The US and German governments should take all available measures to ensure that Covid-19 vaccine makers urgently transfer technology to other capable manufacturers from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and the World Health Organization technology hub. It illustrates that the companies that developed safe and effective Covid-19 mRNA vaccines are not sharing their knowledge and technology widely with capable manufacturers. This new list makes it clear that increased production of mRNA vaccines is possible outside the US and Europe. Human Rights Watch and other groups wrote to the US and German governments urging them to act on a new list published today by experts identifying more than 100 companies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America with the potential to produce mRNA vaccines. (Washington, DC) – The new Covid-19 variant underscores the dangers of severely unequal access to Covid-19 vaccines and the concentration of production in the US and Europe, Human Rights Watch said today. Companies with sterile injectable pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities that have been certified for Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) by the European Medicines Agency and/or the US Food and Drug Administration and/or the World Health Organization.
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