Big Pharma making a power grab for the next pandemic, civil society groups warn

The pharmaceutical industry is trying to tighten its control over the world’s response to future pandemics, a coalition of civil society organisations has warned, as world leaders, health ministers, and pharmaceutical companies meet at the World Health Summit in Berlin.

The pharmaceutical industry is trying to tighten its control over the world’s response to future pandemics, a coalition of civil society organisations has warned, as world leaders, health ministers, and pharmaceutical companies meet at the World Health Summit in Berlin.

The People’s Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of more than 100 civil society organisations, has today warned that enshrining pharmaceutical companies’ demands in a pandemic treaty or other pandemic preparedness plans would normalise global inequalities and tie the hands of governments in future health crises.

The Alliance accuses the industry of trying to whitewash its failure to supply people in low and middle-income countries with vaccines and treatments during the COVID-19 pandemic by making misleading claims that it will respond with “equity” and “global solidarity” in the next pandemic.

The claims are made in a lobbying document from the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), titled the Berlin Declaration, which civil society organisations fear is an attempt to influence intergovernmental negotiations on a pandemic treaty.

In a comprehensive rebuttal of the industry’s claims, the Alliance warns that companies are proposing the world responds to the next pandemic with the same measures that failed to secure equitable global access to vaccines, tests, and treatments in the COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS pandemics.

They warn that voluntary mechanisms have been used to ensure companies’ monopoly on the supply, allocation and price of medicines and vaccines. This has protected the companies’ ability to make extraordinary profits, rather than ensuring global supply meets the needs of all countries.

The People’s Vaccine Alliance report finds that:

• Publicly funded research is the foundation of most medical innovations, including COVID-19 vaccines. But pharmaceutical companies have been allowed to reap massive profits from publicly funded innovations while doing little to supply doses to lower-income countries. This is because governments have failed to place conditions on public funding, socialising the risk of research and development while privatising the resulting profits.
• Intellectual property rules have been used to tighten monopolies on both medical products and the publicly funded knowledge behind them. The evergreening of patents and the litigious approach of pharmaceutical companies have a chilling effect on potential producers in lower-income countries, and on countries that want to exercise their right to override patents to produce medicines.
• Companies are lobbying for measures to insulate themselves from risks, including indemnity and liability waivers, fully funded procurement mechanisms, no-fault compensation schemes, and publicly funded clinical trials. Many of these are temporary privileges granted during the COVID-19 pandemic that companies are trying to make permanent.
• Companies are demanding biological data from around the world but aren’t guaranteeing those populations will benefit from any resulting drugs. Instead, they propose measures that have failed to secure benefits for lower-income countries, including donations, tiered pricing, and voluntary licenses. This may not comply with the Nagoya protocol, which requires the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the use of genetic resources.
• Companies have refused major opportunities to voluntarily license medical products, despite claims they will use this as a way to scale-up production in lower-income countries. They have boycotted and actively lobbied against World Health Organization efforts to facilitate voluntary sharing of technology, such as the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) and the mRNA Hub in South Africa.
• Donations, another solution proposed by the industry, rely on the will of the companies and wealthy countries that decide what to donate, when, to whom and with what conditions. In COVID-19 and previous health crises, donations have failed to address public health needs.
• Tiered pricing, often touted by companies as “equity pricing”, frequently fails to secure affordable access for the poorest people. It ignores the fact that the majority of poor people live in middle-income countries, which are not allowed to buy doses at the offered lower prices.

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS and Co-Chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said:

“Pharmaceutical companies are repeating the same claims they made about supplying HIV medicines to people in developing countries all over again. This feels like deja vu.

“Waiting for pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily supply life-saving medicines and vaccines to people in developing countries has not worked in the AIDS pandemic, it has not worked in the COVID-19 pandemic, and it will not work in future pandemics.

“Governments negotiating a pandemic treaty need to resist the siren calls of industry. The profiteers of this pandemic must not set the rules that govern the preparations for the next pandemic. The world needs an international agreement that guarantees fair and equitable access to medical products for everyone, everywhere, not a power grab by big pharma.”

/Ends

Notes to editors

The full report from the People’s Vaccine Alliance is available here: https://peoplesvaccine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Berlin-Declaration_18-Oct-2022.pdf

The People’s Vaccine Alliance report comes in response to the Berlin Declaration, published by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations (IFPMA), available here: https://peoplesvaccine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Berlin-Declaration-Claims-And-Critiques.pdf

The World Health Summit continues today in Berlin: https://www.worldhealthsummit.org/

The People’s Vaccine Alliance is a coalition of over 100 organisations and networks, supported by Nobel Laureates, health experts, economists, Heads of States, faith leaders and activists, working together for a People’s Vaccine, available free of charge to everyone, everywhere. The Alliance grew organically out of the open letter calling for a People’s Vaccine, organised in May 2020. We work together to end vaccine apartheid: https://peoplesvaccine.org/

Media contact

Joe Karp-Sawey, Senior Media Advisor, People’s Vaccine Alliance

[email protected]