Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-11-2021

DOI

10.1038/s41591-021-01288-8

Abstract

To the Editor—Although the rapid development of several vaccines against COVID-19 is an unparalleled scientific accomplishment, one made possible through the collaboration of researchers, industry and funding bodies, the absence of a system that secures equitable access to vaccines has uncovered deep fissures in the global governance systems for health, as noted in a recent Nature Medicine Editorial.

For example, advance purchase agreements for vaccines against COVID-19 have favored affluent countries, allowing them to secure 150–500% of their predicted needs, while many citizens of low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) will remain unvaccinated until 2024.

Additionally, the power of patent-holders and pharmaceutical companies to place conditions on the use of vaccines prices out access for LMICs, and bilateral purchasing deals are rarely disclosed.

By affording priority on the basis of economic or political power, today’s discourse clearly deviates from previous ethical and public-health principles of maximizing lives or life-years saved, and the sentiment that “people’s entitlement to lifesaving resources should not depend on nationality”.

The COVID-19 pandemic has tested wealthy nations’ commitments to Agenda 2030 and to ‘leaving no one behind’ at the same time that it has revealed democratic deficits, institutional rigidity, weak accountability systems, and inadequate policy space that protects health-governance systems from economic goals.

Thus, the as-yet-limited support for the vaccine-sharing and allocation principles of the COVAX initiative may be a sign not only of a moral catastrophe, to quote the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), but also of inadequate global accountability mechanisms that exposes the consequences of commercial determinants of health.

Publication Citation

Nature Medicine, Online First, March 11, 2021.

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