REACTION TO THE LANCET COMMISSION’S REPORT

Responding to The Lancet COVID-19 Commission’s report, Anna Marriott, Policy Co-Lead for the People’s Vaccine Alliance and Health Policy Manager at Oxfam, said:

“The Lancet Commission details the utter failure of rich country leaders and pharmaceutical companies to ensure the tools needed to end this pandemic were accessible to everyone, everywhere. Nationalism, racism, profiteering, and an overreaching intellectual property system prevented lower-income countries from accessing or producing vaccines. The findings of this commission should shame the international community.

“It is vital that we learn the lessons of this report and build more capacity for the development and manufacturing of vaccines, tests and treatments in low and middle-income countries, free of deadly monopolies. Governments must act immediately to extend an agreement made earlier this year on overriding Covid-19 vaccine patents to cover lifesaving treatments and tests. And they must safeguard WHO-backed efforts to produce mRNA vaccine manufacturing on every continent from the threat of litigation from companies like Moderna. The value of life over profit must also be locked into a pandemic treaty so decisions about who lives and who dies are never again outsourced to the CEOs of big pharma.”

/Ends

Notes for editors

For more information, or to arrange an interview, please contact:
For comments, interviews, or information please contact Sarah Dransfield (Senior Press Officer – Vaccines):

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Read the Lancet Commission report: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01585-9/fulltext

Read more about how Moderna’s patents threaten the WHO-backed South African mRNA hub: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-13/groups-ask-ramaphosa-to-protect-mrna-use-against-moderna-patents