On 6 December 2021, US Senator Bernie Sanders wrote in a tweet, 'This is disgusting. Last week, 8 investors of Pfizer and Moderna earned Rs 75,000 crore after the news of the Omicron variant spread. It is time for such pharma companies to control their greed and share the vaccine with the world. Now it is too much!'
Why did Bernie Sanders say such a bitter thing about the vaccine companies that saved lives from Corona? There are two big reasons for this...
1. Vaccine companies are making new variants and booster doses a means of earning.
2. Vaccine companies are going on arbitrarily around the world by showing fear of Corona.
It is believed that even though governments, doctors, and scientists are trying to end the corona epidemic, big pharma companies do not want this.
Agreement with rich countries, denial to poor countries
According to an analysis by the People's Vaccination Alliance (PVA), the three major vaccine companies Pfizer, Moderna, and BioNTech made a profit of $ 1 thousand every second in 2021. Surprisingly, these companies used their dominance to enter profitable contracts with the governments of rich countries. At the same time, the demand for vaccines in poor countries was put on hold. According to PVA, Pfizer and BioNTech sent only 1% of their total vaccine supplies to poor countries, while Moderna sent only 0.2% of the supply.
How will the coronavirus be eradicated?
At present, 98% of the population of poor countries is not fully vaccinated. According to 'Our World in Data, 55% of people in South America have taken the full dose of the Covid vaccine. In North America, Europe and Oceania, more than half of people have received the full dose.
Only 45% of people in Asia have been able to take the full dose of the Covid vaccine, while in Africa this figure is just 6%. Countries like Israel are preparing for the fourth dose, while 94% of the population of poor countries did not get the first dose. The WHO believes that if such a disparity in the vaccine remains, then the corona epidemic will not end soon.
According to PVA analysis, vaccine companies have received government funding of billions of dollars. Despite this, he refused to share the technology and other information to make medicines with companies from poor countries. Millions of lives could have been saved by doing this. Vaccine companies want to keep the patent at any cost.
India wanted to remove the vaccine from the list of intellectual property
This is from 24 February 2021. Do you remember this month? Corona was spreading twice day and night at quadruple speed. The world was brawling for the vaccine. Under the leadership of India and South Africa, more than 100 countries took a proposal to the World Trade Organization, ie WTO. The proposal demanded a slight relaxation of the intellectual property rules of the medical world, so that vaccine production could be increased.
Billions of rupees spent in lobbying of leaders so that India's proposal is not passed
According to a report published in Down to Earth, to stop this proposal, the American pharma companies' organization 'The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing of America' spent $ 50 million in just a few days, i.e. about 3 thousand 700 crores. and spent in lobbying. Not only this, due to the strong lobbying of pharmaceutical companies, this proposal of India could not be accepted.
Charges up to 30 times the cost of the vaccine, no preventer
According to a recent report by a British newspaper The Guardian, it costs Pfizer 1 dollar i.e. about 75 rupees to prepare a dose of the vaccine. The company sells it for $30. Countries like the UK are buying Pfizer's vaccine by paying 30 times more.
Taking advantage of the monopoly, Pfizer has also struck a deal with the UK government that the deals between them will remain secret. According to Oxfam's report, Moderna also charges up to 15 times the cost of the vaccine.
Companies' response to indiscriminate earnings and not giving the vaccine to poor countries
Albert Borla of Pfizer says that the price of the vaccine dose is logical. It costs as much as a plate of food in high-income countries, half a plate of food in middle-income countries, and the cost of a vaccine in low-income countries. As far as giving the vaccine to everyone is concerned, companies are committed to it.
Johnson & Johnson claims that it has kept 100 crore doses for poor countries. Pfizer says it will give 41% of the dose to middle- and low-income countries. However, no one is giving a precise answer as to why poor and middle-income countries are getting delayed in getting the vaccine.
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