Sir, – Over the next week, those aged over 85 will receive their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine and 12,000 doses will be delivered to GP surgeries and to vaccination centres across the country.
Welcome as that is, it is important to note that under the AstraZeneca deal EU countries, including Ireland, have agreed to pay €2.5 per dose.
In contrast, it was shocking last week to listen to Winnie Byanyima of UNAIDS address the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence on the issue of vaccine equity.
Her native country of Uganda, poverty stricken and with a population of nearly 60 million, will be charged $7 (€5.80) per dose of the same vaccine.
In her own words, “What Europe thought was defending Europe was really defending the profits of the owners of big pharmaceutical companies.”
The question of why pharmaceutical companies are charging developing countries more than they are charging rich countries is an outrage, and a responsibility of the global community to correct.
Of the multitude of lessons learned during the Aids response, the most poignant surely is that millions of lives were needlessly lost because life-saving treatment remained out of reach for nine million people in poor countries – who died because they hadn’t money to pay exorbitant prices.
Winnie Byanyima’s call on the Irish Government last week (when she joined Access to Medicines, an Irish lobbying group that campaigns tirelessly on this issue) to endorse the World Health Organisation (WHO) Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (CTAP), comes at a critical juncture in the global race for vaccines.
The WHO initiative is pressing for pharmaceutical companies to share intellectual property rights, knowledge and data – at a fair price, so that production can be opened up globally and vaccines made affordable to all countries.
We applaud the committee’s willingness to take this issue seriously, particularly John Brady TD’s statement afterwards urging the Government to join Luxembourg, Portugal, Norway and others to support CTAP.
Pricing for pharmaceutical products should not come at the cost to humanity itself. With Ireland now a member of the UN Security Council, we can exert influence at global level.
It is time the pharmaceutical industry was made accountable to all countries, rich or poor. – Yours, etc,
NADINE FERRIS FRANCE,
Irish Global
Health Network,
Dublin 2.