[CTC] COVAX Protects the Vaccine Apartheid Status Quo (Aishu Balaji, Regions Refocus)

[Camden Goetz]

Sharing an article
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/05/covid-covax-vaccine-apartheid-wto-trips-intellectual-property-ip>
from my colleague Aishu Balaji on vaccine apartheid—recently published in
Jacobin and The Wire—coming from her work coordinating the Gender and Trade
Coalition <http://www.gendertradecoalition.org> which recently co-led a
campaign to generate support for the proposed COVID-19 patent waiver at the
WTO.

COVAX Protects the Vaccine Apartheid Status Quo
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/05/covid-covax-vaccine-apartheid-wto-trips-intellectual-property-ip>

By Aishu Balaji

[image: COVAX.png]
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/05/covid-covax-vaccine-apartheid-wto-trips-intellectual-property-ip>

Spearheaded by the World Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
COVAX is mobilising billions from governments and the private sector
(including $4 billion from the Biden administration) in the name of
expanding vaccine access. But many of its architects are also protecting,
expanding, and profiting from pharmaceutical patents, which are at the
heart of the unfolding vaccine apartheid.

Using these conflicting interests as a starting point, the article argues
that COVAX cannot meaningfully address the global vaccine apartheid,
instead just serving to make pandemic profiteering more palatable. Not only
is COVAX inadequate because it fails to address vaccine scarcity or
pharmaceutical monopolies, it undermines more sweeping reforms like the
proposed WTO TRIPS waiver. Ultimately, vaccine justice means abolishing
pharmaceutical patents and fostering the domestic industries of low income
countries.

Read full article here.
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/05/covid-covax-vaccine-apartheid-wto-trips-intellectual-property-ip>


-- 

<http://www.regionsrefocus.org>

Camden Goetz (he/him), Coordinator

+1 646.847.9488

camden at regionsrefocus.org

www.regionsrefocus.org

<http://twitter.com/RegionsRefocus> <https://wa.me/16468479488>
<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWZqZRxk7I-YquHBpwBBBiQ>
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