Covid-19 vaccines created using public funds should not be used to fuel obscene private profits, a senior Oxfam official told RT, amid growing concern that poor nations can’t afford to inoculate their populations.
An alarming report authored by Oxfam International in collaboration with a group of other human rights organizations warned that only one in 10 people in poor countries are set to receive coronavirus vaccines in 2021, while rich nations have “hoarded” three times the amount of doses that they actually need.
Speaking to RT about the findings, Max Lawson, the head of inequality policy for Oxfam International, said it was unacceptable for wealthy nations such as the United States and the United Kingdom to “protect the profits and intellectual property and monopoly” of pharmaceutical giants in a bid to ensure that they have enough doses for themselves. He noted that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which has already been approved for use in the UK and Canada, received generous government support during its development. As such, the jab should be viewed as “public property” and its “recipe” should be shared in order to facilitate cheap, mass production of the drug, Lawson argued.
