Medicine 1

“In our struggle for much-needed vaccines, South Africa has been forced to spend unimaginable sums on overpriced doses of vaccine. We were forced into contracts on unfair and undemocratic terms that were completely one-sided.”

Citation source: hil/aerzteblatt.de (19.09.23): " High vaccine prices in South Africa: pharmaceutical companies and vaccine alliance criticized"

Fatima Hassan is a South African human rights lawyer and social justice activist and founder of the "Health Justice Initiative" in South Africa. She won the Calgary Peace Prize in 2022 for her work in uncovering inequalities in the global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, among other things.

The coronavirus pandemic has once again highlighted the global inequalities in terms of medical care. Many countries in the Global North secured vaccine doses that far exceeded the size of their populations. Germany, for example, had 116.4 million Covid-19 vaccine doses in stock in February 2023, out of a population of 84 million. This vaccine nationalism (the tendency of wealthy countries to reserve vaccines for themselves) has led to shortages and higher prices on the international market. This made it difficult for poorer countries to gain access to affordable vaccines. In April 2020, the COVAX initiative was founded by several supranational institutions to coordinate global vaccine distribution. However, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights criticized in April 2021 that COVAX cannot solve the problem of globally insufficient vaccine production. This would require technical support and, in particular, concessions in the area of intellectual property (patents). The Africa Coordinator of the People's Vaccine Alliance Maaza Seyoum criticizes the system and speaks of "systemic racism" for the global community's inadequate response to the COVID-19 pandemic in poorer countries(The Guardian, 26.08.2022).

*Edna Bonhomme (27.04.2022): Diseases of Relevance. London Review of Books. *Fatima Hassan (23.05.2022): Vaccine apartheid is racist and wrong (PLOS Blogs Speaking of Medicine and Health)

2021