Global Citizen, I stood and protested alone in Davos to represent the millions still without COVID-19 vaccines, and African countries who’ve been denied access to produce vaccines for ourselves.
I’m a 51-year-old nurse from Liberia and a father of two. I never expected myself to be here, but I have seen Ebola and now COVID-19 ravage my country, and needless deaths when the technology to save lives exists.
The world clapped for us health workers, yet over 180,000 of us have died in this crisis. I wanted to turn this applause on its head by clapping for the cynical winners of this pandemic — the pharma companies who are making billions by monopolizing knowledge at the expense of human lives.
Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna make $1,000 profit every second while the world's poorest remain unvaccinated. Billions in public funding was given to develop these vaccines but companies have guarded the vaccine recipes and then sold the majority of their stocks to rich countries at high prices. |
