A Global Vaccine access strategy
On May 19 the SNF Agora Institute, in conjunction with Democracy Moves, put forward a panel to discuss the eminently important topic of improving global access to the COVID-19 vaccine. The panel was moderated by Democracy Moves founder Scott Warren, and included guests:
Frida Romay Hidalgo, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Mexican National Institute of Public Health who specializes in global health, gender equity, and bioethics;
Priti Krishtel, a health justice lawyer who focuses on structural inequality in access to medicine in the global South, and has worked to ensure the Biden-Harris administration prioritizes equity in the Patent and Trademark office; and
Reshma Ramachandran, MD, a health services researcher and National Clinician Scholars Program fellow at the Yale School of Public Health who works with the Innovation + Design Enabling Access (IDEA) initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and as a Steering Committee member for the Doctors for America Drug Affordability Action Team.
While some countries have successfully vaccinated more than 50% of their adult population, other countries, typically in Africa, Asia, and South America, have yet to acquire the doses necessary to begin mass-vaccination campaigns. These broad vaccination disparities demonstrate that the world is lacking a truly equitable approach to vaccine rollout. In this conversation, the panel explored some of the possible solutions to ensuring that all countries receive the vaccines that they need to truly bring an end to the devastating COVID-19 pandemic.
Particularly notable was the panel’s discussion of the structural inefficiencies regarding the United Nations’ COVAX program, especially in the wider context of the virus’ devastation of India--where some of COVAX’s most important suppliers are located. COVAX, panelist Reshma Ramachandran argued, was substantially limited by pharmaceutical companies’ lack of desire to share technology and productive capacity. This lack of desire restricted the COVAX program and forced them to rely on a small number of suppliers like the Serum Institute in India--who would eventually have to restrict their exports as cases ballooned in India.
In addition to discussion over the dangers of concentration in the supply chain for COVAX program, Krishtel noted that the failures of the world to develop an equitable framework for vaccine distribution rests on the refusal of pharmaceutical companies--and national governments that they are close to-- to share technology and knowledge as shown above. Without the open flow of information and productive capacity, the world will continue to face the bottlenecks seen in the COVAX situation and will waste precious time in conquering the virus before mutations arise that could threaten the efficacy of current vaccine technology.
Finally, providing information about the vaccine was a key point addressed by panelist Romay Hidalgo, specifically in the context of different countries’ capacity to disseminate factual information about the vaccines to their populations. Countries like Mexico, Romay Hidalgo argues, are not just facing a material shortage of vaccine doses but a shortage of accessible material demonstrating the effectiveness of the vaccines targeted at populations that may be hesitant to take it.