This month’s grassroots conference call discussed the need for ‘vaccine equity’ in the global COVID-19 response. Our guest speaker, Oxfam GB’s Health Policy Manager Anna Marriott, called for the UK Government to both scale up donations of surplus vaccines to countries that need them, and to support the sharing by pharmaceutical companies of the recipes, knowledge and technologies to scale up vaccine production capacity globally. You can read more and take action here, and you can watch the video of the call here.
You may also find our previous calls and events on this topic interesting. Our June conference call with Dr. Srinivas Murthy and our July Conference call with Waiswa Nkwanga were both about COVID-19 vaccine equity. During our National Conference we also held a panel discussion on the topic with advocates from around the world.
Links and resources shared in the discussion:
Article by Ian Mitchell, Center For Global Development, on the possibility of further ODA cuts
Article: UK aid cuts hit poorest countries hardest
Article: UK aid cuts ‘body blow’ to health workers
Foreign Affairs Select Committee report, “Global Health, Global Britain”
Blog post: The interventions needed to realise Universal Health Coverage
RESULTS UK 2021 National Conference session recordings
September campaign action on nutrition
People’s Vaccine Alliance website
Article about the role the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation allegedly played in preventing Oxford University from placing the rights to its vaccine in the public domain
Article on double standards in the UK not considering travellers as ‘fully vaccinated’ if their dose was manufactured in the Global South