March 11 marks the two-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a global pandemic. The Department of Global Health will be participating in the Global Day of Action to advocate for the removal of pharmaceutical monopolies on COVID tests, vaccines, and treatments to allow low- and middle-income countries to produce the life-saving medicines their populations desperately need. 

The Department of Global Health’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee invites you to participate in a mass die-in on March 11 at 1pm PST at the Red Square on the University of Washington Seattle campus. This event is jointly sponsored by the Washington Fair Trade Coalition and the Trade Justice Education Fund. 

Vaccine apartheid is the gap in vaccine distribution between wealthy countries and low- and middle-income countries across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. A vaccine patent waiver will help expand production and boost immunization coverage across the Global South.

In October 2020, long before the emergence of the highly-contagious Delta and Omicron coronavirus variants, South Africa and India submitted a request to the WTO to waive the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) protections on COVID-related technologies. The proposal, backed by more than 100 other countries, would allow low- and middle-income countries to produce inexpensive generic vaccines essential to boosting global production. Though the U.S. publicly endorsed a TRIPS waiver, Germany and other European Union nations blocked passage at the TRIPS Council meeting in October 2021.  

The Omicron coronavirus variant highlighted the critical need for the waiver. Ironically, the Omicron variant also led to the postponement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) December 2021 conference, where the patent waiver was to be taken up. This postponement has not stopped activists and civil organizations from calling for the waiver be approved.  As we did in the struggle for affordable AIDS drugs 20 years ago, it is more urgent than ever that Seattle’s prominent public health community join efforts to pressure the WTO to approve the waiver without further delay.  

Currently there are more than 50 countries that have missed even the substandard target of 40% COVID-19 vaccination rates, with less than 9% of the population fully vaccinated across Africa. Vaccine apartheid has contributed to the death of nearly 5.2 million people and enabled emergence of five variants of concern in the very countries that requested the TRIPS waiver. While there are other factors and barriers to vaccine roll-out around the world that also must be addressed, the WTO waiver is essential to boost production and bring down the cost of these life-saving medicines.

Join us and activists around the globe on March 11 at Red Square to demand vaccine justice!

James Pfeiffer, DGH director, diversity, equity and inclusion and professor of global health

Resources

Videos

• COVID19 VACCINE APARTHEID: Global Inequality & International People’s Vaccine - 2.11.22              
• South African FM: Is Africa facing COVID vaccine apartheid? | Talk to Al Jazeera  
• Coronavirus pandemic: South Africa's Ramaphosa slams travel ban, 'vaccine apartheid' • FRANCE 24         
• Racism leads to "vaccine apartheid" - UN Human Rights Expert   
• How to End Vaccine Apartheid – An FP Virtual Dialogue  

News Articles

• South Africa Hails New COVID Jab Plant in Fight For Self-Reliance              
• Year Three of the Pandemic: Record High Cases in the US, Vaccine Hesitancy Persists and Vaccine Apartheid Leaves Low-income Nations Behind    
• WHO Warns Only 7% of African Population Fully Inoculated Amid Ongoing Vaccine Apartheid              
• Worries Over Growing Vaccine Shortages in 2022             
• Wealthy nations must act to prevent a global ‘vaccine apartheid’              
• Vaccine Apartheid is Literally Going to Kill Us      
• As New COVID-19 Variant Spreads, Human Rights Lawyer Points to 'Vaccine Apartheid'    
• Vaccine Apartheid is Prolonging COVID – Not Vaccine Hesitancy 
• How to End Vaccine Apartheid   
• Omicron Sounds Alarm on Fair Access to Vaccines, WTO Chief Says          
• US Trade Chief to Keep Pushing on Vaccine IP, WTO Reform After Meeting Delay
• A Patent Waiver on COVID Vaccines is Right and Fair       
• US Supports the COVID-19 TRIPS Waiver for Vaccines; Now Technology Sharing Must Become a Reality            
• Members Discuss Intellectual Property Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic        
• COVID-19 Vaccinations: African Nations Miss WHO Target            
• WHO COVID-19 Dashboard         
• Tracking SARS-CoV-2 Variants    
• Here's Why Developing Countries Can Make mRNA COVID Vaccines         
• Only 14% of Promised COVID Vaccine Doses Reach Poorest National        
• COVAX: Working For Global Equitable Access to COVID-19 Vaccines         
• The Pandemic's True Death Toll
• The Goal: At Least 40% Vaxxed in All Nations by Year End. This Map Shows How We Stand.              
• Profits Over People: Neo-colonial Relations Reflect in Access to Vaccines

Papers

• Vaccine apartheid: global cooperation and equity             
• Vaccine apartheid: This is not the way to end the pandemic         
• COVAX can still end COVID-19 vaccine apartheid
• The Politics of Covid-19 Vaccine Distribution and Recognition      
• Inequitable COVID-19 vaccine distribution and the intellectual property rights prolong the pandemic           
• Ensuring the global COVID-19 vaccine equity: Universal vaccine access strategy in the context of low and-middle-income countries