Hi John,
After eight months of stalling by a handful of rich countries including the UK, members of the World Trade Organization will finally begin negotiations tomorrow on the proposal to suspend intellectual property on vaccines and treatments during the pandemic.
This is a crucial period in the fight for a People’s Vaccine and we need to do everything possible to keep up the pressure in the coming months.
Can you join Global Justice Now as a member today to help power the campaign for a People’s Vaccine not a profit vaccine?
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A campaign milestone
The support of the Biden administration for this proposal was a major milestone in the global campaign for a People’s Vaccine. It’s not a campaign victory yet but it is a game-changing moment. Biden's move helped to unlock talks and has already led to other countries declaring their support such as France, Spain, New Zealand and Ireland.
But just as significant, it also represents a massive blow to corporate power. US trade policy has long been used by big pharma as a vehicle to dictate trade rules that shore up monopoly control and defend excessive profits. "The pharmaceutical industry in the United States has never lost a political struggle. Never lost!” said Bernie Sanders in reaction to the US announcement, but it looks as if, in this case, the mobilisation of global people power has moved the immovable.
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With your help, we can win
We must take a moment to celebrate these milestones as small victories to help us endure the long haul. With your support, we have been challenging the power of the pharmaceutical industry for several years. All our work before the pandemic helped to raise public awareness and build expertise to fight against a system where corporations can hold the world to ransom over life-saving medicines.
We’ve put big pharma and its allies in rich governments on the defensive. To protect big pharma monopolies and excessive profits at all costs, the UK government will keep highlighting its benevolent actions such as donating excess doses. But charity won’t end vaccine inequality, the global south needs justice.
I believe this is a fight we can win. We have to.
Not since the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis over twenty years ago has the world mobilised in global outrage at the racist allocation of life-saving treatments. Pharmaceutical companies get to decide who lives and who dies from Covid-19 and by selling publicly-funded vaccines to the highest bidders, they are effectively treating the lives of black and brown people in the global south as lesser.
We cannot do this without you, join us today to bring an end to vaccine apartheid.
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Rich governments like the UK are complicit in this system by not taking the action that is required. The longer vaccine apartheid continues, and as new variants continue to emerge, the clearer it will become that no one is safe until everyone is safe.
Join us to fight this global injustice and help end the pandemic sooner for all.
Yours sincerely,
Heidi Chow
Campaigner at Global Justice Now
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