Review by Mark Langabeer, Hastings and Rye Labour member
Panorama this week investigated the reasons behind the current failure to vaccinate against Covid in many countries. Since the invasion of Ukraine, the media have lost interest in Covid, but from the point of view of world health, vaccination is still a key issue. As an advisor from the World Health Organisation explained, unless vaccines are distributed to the whole world, new strains of the virus are likely.
The programme began with the setting up of COVAX, the aim of which was to ensure a fair distribution of vaccines; it had a target of vaccinating 40% of the world adult population by the end of 2021. Currently, 92 nations have failed to reach this target and in low income countries, the vaccination rate is below seven per cent. Bronagh Munro, the Panorama presenter, pointed out that the rich G7 nations stockpiled much of the available vaccines and only 2% of the supply was delivered to the poorest states.
The WHO advisor made it clear that this state of affairs has cost lives and in a highly interconnected world, may cause a resurgence of new variants in the more prosperous countries. In some cases, COVEX delivered donations of vaccines from the rich nations, only to find that some of them were out of date. There have also been problems of distribution and refrigeration of the vaccines in the poorer nations, so delivered vaccines quickly become useless.
Munro noted that the three big suppliers of vaccines have even failed to honour orders for the poorer nations. She visited the Ivory Coast, which currently has only an 11% vaccination rate, but has suffered from a failure of supply from the pharmaceutical companies.
Vaccines developed from government money
Munro also reported on the huge profits made by the big three suppliers. Johnson and Johnson pocketed $2.4bn, Moderna, $15bn and Pfizer $18bn. Nine new billionaires have been created as a result of vaccine development. Some may try to justify this on the grounds that they have ‘saved many lives’ but, as Munro points, Moderna was a small company without any products, who were boosted by huge state grants. Moreover, it was government scientists who developed the vaccine. Moderna’s role was simply in the manufacture of the product.
The programme reported that a lab in South Africa are attempting to develop their own vaccine and Moderna are refusing to cooperate and are even threatening legal action on vaccine patents. These are the wonders of the so-called free market! Moderna vaccines are the most expensive, costing $30 a shot and many poor nations are unable pay that kind of money.
The news is full of stories about the horror of war at the moment and in particular the plight of refugees. I watched last week’s BBC Question Time programme where Penny Mordaunt, Minister of State at the Department for International Trade, said that around 200,000 refugees are expected to arrive in the UK from Ukraine. It took some of the audience to point out that this number was in stark contrast to the attitude shown to refugees who risk life and limb on flimsy rubber boats crossing the English Channel.
The hypocrisy of the Tories is truly breath taking. A right-wing commentator-comedian (of Russian decent) even said that Russians have different morals, “less regard for human life”, than westerners. This idea is not far removed from the Nazis, who viewed Russians as sub-human and treated Russian prisoners of war accordingly. What was striking, was that no-one on the panel took him to task on this appalling comment. The true morality of the capitalist nations, both west and east, is reflected in their failure to vaccinate the world. Profit is their only one true morality.
The Panorama programme is available on BBC i-player (picture above), here.
