Hi John,
Last Friday night I was preparing to travel to Geneva for the World Trade Organisation summit. On the table was the crucial question of whether a handful of wealthy countries, including Britain, would finally drop their opposition to suspending Covid patents. This would allow us to ramp up manufacturing and distribute Covid vaccines and treatments more fairly across the world.
Then, late on Friday, we heard the summit had been cancelled, because the Omicron variant was already spreading across the world. This was the awful moment experts have warned about for months now: if we leave large areas of the world unvaccinated, variants will arise that threaten the healthcare of all of us.
While we’ve built a huge amount of public support for a people’s vaccine over the last year, we still haven’t won the change we need. This battle is by no means over. Even though the WTO summit has been cancelled, they can still take action, and so we need to continue to build public pressure on the UK government to suspend the patents. We need to scale up our campaign, demanding large pharmaceutical companies share their vaccine technology and know-how, to maximise global vaccine production.
To do this, we need your continued support. Signing up as a member with a monthly donation of just £3 gives us the stability to see this campaign through to the end. Will you help by joining us today?
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We have gained so much attention for our campaign to change the trade rules which allow big pharmaceutical corporations to monopolise and profiteer from health emergencies like Covid-19. We’ve even won the support of the President of the USA. But it’s not enough. Not yet.
Earlier this week I wrote in the Guardian that, far from addressing the global trade rules that hand big pharmaceutical corporations such huge power over our health needs, Boris Johnson is actually supporting more trade liberalisation, reducing further the ability of global south countries to respond to the pandemic. He has failed, entirely, to learn the lesson that ‘leaving it to the market’ will not get us out of this crisis.
This new variant is frightening and we must do all we can to make this a wake-up call. And things are moving. In recent days Conservative MPs and Lords signed a letter, for the first time, calling for a TRIPS waiver. The government of Norway, up to now a blocker of the proposal at the WTO, said it would move to support the waiver too.
What’s more, Spain’s public research council handed over new Covid diagnostic technology to the WHO so it can be shared freely with the world, as a public good. And in South Africa, scientists are working to mimic Moderna’s vaccine so they too can share this technology with the world.
Please help us build on these victories. Big change, like the one we’re seeking here, does not happen overnight. Nor is it the result of quiet lobbying of the powerful. It comes from a movement of campaigners and activists demanding change - in parliament, in the media and on the streets. Join us as a member today, and make this movement bigger and stronger.
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Change can happen. Those southern countries that have been failed by wealthy governments and big pharma will not go into another health emergency like they went into this one. We must support their efforts to create a better way of producing the medicines we all need. While a TRIPS waiver is not the only thing we need, it is absolutely necessary to building a healthcare system that puts people before profits.
Thank you for your support.
Nick Dearden
Director of Global Justice Now
P.S. As a member you also receive our magazine Ninety-Nine three times a year and you can have a say in the future of our organisation at our annual gatherings.
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