Available to all, everywhere, free of charge

Letter to leaders: end vaccine monopolies

As we pass the two year mark of the pandemic, more than 130 former world leaders, Nobel laureates, leading scientists, economists, humanitarians, faith leaders, business leaders, trade unionists, and celebrities call for urgent action to bring an end to the pandemic.

They urge world leaders “to do what is necessary to end this crisis” and unite behind a People’s Vaccine.

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No ‘return to normal’

Our best chance of all staying safe is to ensure a COVID-19 vaccine is available for all as a global common good. This will only be possible with a transformation in how vaccines are produced and distributed — pharmaceutical corporations must allow the COVID-19 vaccines to be produced as widely as possible by sharing their knowledge free from patents.

Instead they are protecting their monopolies and putting up barriers to restrict production and drive up prices, leaving us all in danger. No one company can produce enough for the whole world. So long as vaccine solutions are kept under lock and key, there won’t be enough to go around. We need a People’s Vaccine, not a profit vaccine.

“A Covid-19 vaccine must be seen as a global public good, a people's vaccine”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres

Global Vaccine Summit, 4 June 2020

Free from patents

A people’s vaccine, not a profit vaccine.

The people’s vaccine

A growing movement of health and humanitarian organisations, past and present world leaders, health experts, faith leaders and economists urging that when safe and effective vaccines are developed they are produced rapidly at scale and made available for all people, in all countries, free of charge.

We are calling on governments and pharmaceutical corporations to:

Urgently agree and implement a global roadmap to deliver the WHO goal of fully vaccinating 70% of people by mid-2022.
Maximise the production of safe and effective vaccines and other COVID-19 products by suspending relevant intellectual property rules and ensuring the mandatory pooling of all COVID-19 related knowledge, data and technologies so that any nation can produce or buy sufficient and affordable doses of vaccines, treatments and tests.
Invest public funding now in a rapid and massive increase in vaccine manufacturing as well as research and development (R&D) capacity to build a global distributed network capable of and governed to deliver affordable vaccines as global public goods to all nations.
Ensure COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests are sold to governments and institutions at a price as close to the true cost as possible, provided free of charge to everyone, everywhere, and allocated according to need.
Scale up sustainable investment in public health systems.
By agreeing to take these five clear steps for the world has the chance to turn this crisis around. Read the full details of our five step plan here.

“The people. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”

Jonas Salk

The inventor of the polio vaccine, when asked who owned his discovery

The organisers

The People’s Vaccine Alliance is a coalition of over 80 organisations, supported by Nobel Laureates, scientists, Heads of States and activists, working for a People’s Vaccine, available free of charge to everyone, everywhere.

If you believe that access to healthcare is a human right, and that the world’s approach to COVID-19 should prioritise people’s lives, not profits for pharmaceutical companies, take action with us today.

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