As the world commemorated the second year since the World Health Organization (WHO) formally declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on 11 March 2020, the Council for NGOs in Malawi – CONGOMA in partnership with Global Call to Action Against Poverty – GCAP and People’s Vaccine joined the rest of the world on the commemoration.
CONGOMA organised a campaign which took place at the District Council’s office campus in Lilongwe. The campaign was demonstrated by a march at the premises, reading of a press statement to the press, displaying of banners and placards and wearing of printed T-Shirts carrying Vaccine monopoly campaign messages.
The press was largely involved as this was meant mostly for the press, including social media, online media, print media and broadcasters.
The messages were urging the developed countries to stop monopolizing the COVID 19 vaccines and the large Pharmaceutical companies making a lot of profit with the vaccines to share their patents so that even the developing countries can make their own vaccines.
The given facts around the COVID 19 pandemic and the vaccines include;
1.Millions of Malawians and billions of people worldwide are yet to access COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies are recording profits of over US$1 million per hour.
2.The lack of strong government action in the face of pharmaceutical monopoly greed is causing thousands of needless deaths each day. And even as Omicron starts to wane, ongoing vaccine inequity threatens to spark new COVID-19 variants that could once again prolong the pandemic for everyone.
3.World leaders have the power right now to remove Big Pharma’s monopoly hold on COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments and allow countries to produce the life-saving medicines their populations desperately need.
4.COVID-19 is not expected to go away on its own. The only way we could permanently stop COVID-19’s disruptions to our lives is if we help make vaccines, tests and treatments readily available to everyone in order to prevent new and even deadlier variants from arising.
5.There are over 100 facilities across the world that could start producing more vaccine doses if Big Pharma’s monopoly stranglehold over these technologies was temporarily lifted and the recipes were proactively shared.
- Governments must deliver on a long-awaited intellectual property waiver, compel pharmaceutical companies to share vaccine-making know-how, and fund the production of regional vaccine and treatment production hubs.
CONGOMA on behalf of the CSOs therefore called on the Government of Malawi and all governments globally to take these urgent five steps:
- Urgently agree to and implement a global roadmap to deliver the WHO goal of fully vaccinating 70% of people by mid-2022, and beyond this ensure sustained, timely and equitable access worldwide to COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, tests and other medical technologies, including all effective and safe next-generation COVID-19 vaccines and medical technologies.
- Maximize the production of safe and effective vaccines, treatments and other COVID-19 products by suspending relevant intellectual property rules and ensuring the mandatory pooling of all COVID-19 related knowledge, data and technologies so that any nation can produce or buy sufficient and affordable doses of vaccines, treatments and tests.
- Invest public funding now in a rapid and massive increase in vaccine manufacturing, awareness raising to clear myths about the pandemic and the vaccine as well as research and development (R&D) capacity to build a globally distributed network capable of and governed to deliver affordable vaccines as global public goods to all nations.
- Make COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests available to governments and institutions at a price as close to the true cost as possible, and provided free of charge to everyone, everywhere, and allocated according to need.
- Scale up sustainable investment in public health systems to ensure that low- and middle-income country governments have adequate resources to get shots into arms and save lives. These investments will pay dividends in the global economy and help restore economic and development gains which the global COVID-19 pandemic has partially reversed.
The Campaign took place globally on the 11th of March 2022.