Safe, Effective and Free Vaccine to All; Vaccine is a global and national public good
1) Public service without profit-motive and transparency drives the vaccine model
2) Free access for people, prioritized the most vulnerable and ensuring decent working conditions
3) a global effort to produce and equitably distribute vaccines and treatments
4) A robust health care system is needed to deliver the free vaccine,
5) A strong role and a wide space for CSOs in the general response to COVID-19
Public service without profit-motive and transparency drives the vaccine modelThe COVID-19 vaccine is a public good and everyone, especially those in the margins must not be left behind in accessing this public good. Distribution procedures must take a rights-based approach, which views access to and information about the vaccine as a right and not a privilege, and on a voluntary basis. The capitalist pharmaceutical industry’s ownership of the production of vaccines contradicts the ideal of ‘public good’: pharmaceutical companies are motivated by profitability. At the same time, states and pharmaceutical companies operating in secrecy and competition belies transparency and places profit interests above the needs of people.
Free access for people, prioritized the most vulnerable and ensuring decent working conditions.
No one should have to pay to be protected from COVID-19. The focus should be given first to the most vulnerable people including health workers, the elderly and medically vulnerable.
The free vaccine works within the safe workplace framework (ILO Convention C155), where prevention is priority, as stated in Article 4, Section 2 "The aim of the policy shall be to prevent accidents and injury to health arising out of, linked with or occurring in the course of work, by minimizing, so far as is reasonably practicable, the causes of hazards inherent in the working environment."
The hierarchy of control of hazards is the operational framework, where elimination of the hazard being the most effective, with the burden of prevention being on the employer, with engineering and administrative controls being more effective than personal protective equipment.
No trade-offs in terms of health and safety.
A worker who receives the vaccine must not receive less rights in terms of occupational health and safety. A vaccinated worker cannot lose the basic labor rights and freedoms, including freedom of association, collective bargaining, and other core labor rights.
States must facilitate health access to all essential frontline workers at both workplaces and in the community and put in place adequate security measures to address the threats.
The proposal to create a “vaccine passport”, allowing those with such a passport to travel can become problematic. The potential of abuse of such a document, especially for migrant workers, is apparent. Labour traffickers can take advantage of the document requirement and prey upon desperate migrant workers seeking employment outside of their home countries, like the widely and officially documented forms of abuse by traffickers on unsuspecting migrant workers. As stated above, there should be no trade-offs between labour rights and the vaccine.
Compensation systems must be in place. In cases of workers getting sick, the present compensation systems must be COVID19 responsive, entailing the need to update and include COVID19 as a compensable disease. Pandemic leaves must also be institutionalized to avoid threat to income security of workers. Compensation systems must be updated to include workers in the informal economy who are facing the same risks as those in the formal sector.
A global effort to produce and equitably distribute vaccines and treatments.
Dr Ursula von der Leyen - President of the European Commission, and Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus - Director-general of the World Health Organization stated that: “A global pandemic requires no less than a world effort to end it. None of us will be safe until everyone is safe”.
Patent free to all research and development of new vaccines and treatment will be the only way to help scale up and faster production of vaccines to allow a global access to the vaccine and treatment for everyone who needs them. Heidi Chow, from Global Justice Now, said: “All pharmaceutical corporations and research institutions working on a vaccine must share the science, technological know-how, and intellectual property behind their vaccine so enough safe and effective doses can be produced. Governments must also ensure the pharmaceutical industry puts people’s lives before profits.”
The current model of pharmaceutical research is based on patent monopolies that keeps the science, technological know-how and intellectual property in secret. Although much basic research got public funding, in the end most of the later stage funding comes from the industry and the outcome of those research fell into the private hands.
Rich countries should stop their practice of vaccine-grabbing. The vaccine should be fairly distributed with priority given first to the countries with the most acute exposure to the disease first, the most vulnerable people first, not the wealthy. The developing countries should have equal access to the vaccine, instead of where the vaccines are produced. Currently, the rich countries have made use of their power to capture the vaccine doses more than their emergent need. According to the Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI), “As of mid-January, more than 7 billion vaccine doses had been purchased globally and the lion’s share—4.2 billion doses—have gone to high-income countries.” The United States, the UK, and the European Union have bought two to three times the vaccines they need as insurance, and “Canada has purchased enough to vaccinate its population five times over”.
The COVAX initiative co-led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the Gavi vaccine alliance, and the WHO aims to accelerate the development of vaccines against COVID-19 by pooling funds from wealthier nations and guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world. It will deliver over two billion doses of safe and effective vaccines, including almost 1.8 billion doses to cover about 28% coverage of 92 lower income economies by the end of 2021 (COVAX forecast on 2 Mar 2021).
But this commitment, as it says, faced many uncertainties including manufacturing capacity, regulation, funding availability.
A robust health care system is needed to deliver the free vaccine.
The Covid-19 pandemic has obviously shown the failure of the health care and social protection systems in most of the countries that pushes more and more debates on limitation of the dominant social protection related policies and discourses, especially from human rights and gender perspectives. Since the start of the pandemic, there has been renewed discussion and drive to rethink the nature of work and welfare.
A free vaccine is nothing if it cannot be accessed. To deliver the fastest roll-out of the vaccine, and to ensure no one is left hanging, there is a need for a robust public health care system. This means increasing the budget for health care in general, recruiting more health workers to be able to deliver the vaccine to the widest possible number of people, the fastest way possible. By strengthening the public health care system that provides adequate facilities and capacity to serve the people, we are also building resilience in the face of future pandemics.
A strong role and a wide space for CSO in the general response to COVID19.
Across different countries, people have been establishing new voluntary associations and launching various initiatives for mutual aid, especially where the Government policies were ineffective and inadequate. The activism also transfers to the virtual world, where people are using social media groups to match people in need with community groups who provide immediate aid, while the online communication platforms also allows the transmission of information and democratic values across borders and regime types. CSOs also have actively monitored and advocated for more inclusive and comprehensive social protection policies.
Thus, CSOs can do and should do more to advocate the Government to provide more welfare and support for people, particularly in transparency, quality guarantee, accessibility, and provision of free vaccines. And the Government, in facilitating a better CSOs role, should provide wider space for them especially the marginalised communities to engage more effectively and timely in the general response to COVID-19.
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