CAMPAIGNERS from Global Justice Now Scotland have stated they are “outraged” as shareholders at pharmaceutical multinationals Pfizer and Moderna rejected calls from the World Health Organisation (WHO) to share vaccine “know-how”.
They joined protesters from across the UK on Thursday at Pfizer’s offices in Surrey, with wheelbarrows of fake cash and a giant cheque to mark the companies’ profiteering during the Covid pandemic.
Image credit: Jess Hurd
Other campaigners joined from organisations Global Justice Now UK, Act-Up London, Just Treatment and STOP AIDS.
This demonstration coincided with Pfizer and Moderna’s annual general meeting in New York, where vaccine equality resolutions which would have encouraged the companies to examine the feasibility of sharing their Covid-19 vaccine “know-how” were defeated.
Meanwhile, their executive leadership team and shareholders celebrated almost doubling its annual revenue to $81.3 billion in 2021.
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Liz Murray, head of Scottish campaigns at Global Justice Now said it was important to travel down to Pfizer’s offices in Surrey to show that people across Scotland are “outraged at their pandemic profiteering”.
Murray said: "77% of us here in Scotland are fully vaccinated but only 15% in low-income countries have received even one dose. That’s the scandal of global vaccine inequality – which has been fuelled by a profit-driven pharmaceutical system.
“The Scottish government has been outspoken in backing our call for big pharma to share the science of Covid vaccines, and in urging the UK government to make that same call, so that everyone everywhere can get protected. But companies including Pfizer are still refusing to do the right thing.”
Campaigners said that Pfizer has contributed to a more than 15 billion dose gap in global supply needed for 2022. This trend is continuing with treatments, they argue, with this year’s predicted supply of several key Covid-19 therapeutics having been already bought up almost entirely by high-income countries.
Image credit: Jess Hurd
Organisations also point out that there are over 100 sites outside of the Global North that could be producing mRNA vaccines, were Pfizer to share its technology and know-how. Meanwhile, just 15.3% of people in low-income countries have received a first vaccine dose.
One young protester, Tarun Gidwani, said he was protesting as he found the celebration of private profit “sickening” given Pfizer and Moderna’s refusal to share technology and know-how with countries in the Global South.
He said: “Pfizer has blood on its hands. This pandemic is not over, but we also need to look at the entire system that allows big pharma to profit off of human suffering.
“I have family members in India who have to ration their haemophilia drugs because of the extortionate prices pharma companies charge. As a result they have to suffer severe bleeds and substantial pain.
“This is completely avoidable. No one should have to go without medication due to financial cost.”
Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said: “In spite of the unprecedented personal intervention of the head of the WHO, these shareholders have chosen to put their own wealth ahead of saving lives and ending this pandemic. This will mean more deaths and more variants.
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“While we applaud those shareholders who did vote for the resolution, the fact is that more than two years into a pandemic, the majority shareholders in these companies are refusing to even contemplate measures that could save lives.
“Voluntary action has failed. You simply can’t appeal to the better nature of these profiteers. Instead, we need to override their patents immediately.
“Our message to the shareholders today: the profits you are celebrating were made by keeping medicines from those who need them. Pfizer's pandemic legacy will one of greed and complicity in huge numbers of preventable deaths in the Global South."
In March 2022, the UN said vaccine inequity was leading to tens of thousands of preventable deaths every week.
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