The atmosphere was tense at the press conference. The audience was mainly made up of anti-AIDS activists determined to tell their four truths to representatives of multinational pharmaceutical companies who had come to sell their salad.
This happened on July 10, 2000. For The Press, I covered the 13e Durban International AIDS Conference, South Africa. The epidemic was then wreaking havoc on the black continent. It mowed down 10 times more lives there than the war.
The South African province of Kwazulu-Natal, of which Durban is the largest city, was particularly affected: one in four pregnant women was HIV-positive.
At the time, triple therapy had changed the lives of people living with HIV in the West. For them, AIDS no longer meant death for sure. But Africans could not afford a cocktail of drugs of $ 15,000 a year. They continued to die by the millions.
And while they were dying, the pharmaceutical companies refused to lower their prices. Anyway, they said, these prices were just one obstacle among many. Poor countries also lacked modern hospitals and qualified doctors to administer antiretrovirals …
The atmosphere was therefore tense at the press conference. “What infrastructure do we lack in Johannesburg or Durban? had launched an activist to the director of public affairs of Merck & Co. This argument of infrastructure, it is bullshit ! ”
Two decades later, humanity is battling another pandemic. But the bullshit is the same.
The COVID-19 crisis has created vaccine apartheid. In their race for immunization, rich countries have secured seven billion doses. They have stored it to the point of having to throw it away. Canada alone wasted a million1. Until now.
Meanwhile, poor countries are reaping crumbs. As a result, 66% of people are fully immunized in rich countries, compared to 2.5% in poor countries.
Nothing has changed. Nor the scandalous inequalities in access to treatment. Nor the rhetoric of pharmaceutical companies determined to protect their billions.
Over a year ago, India and South Africa called for the temporary lifting of manufacturers’ intellectual property rights. This measure would allow them to concoct the vaccines they desperately need.
Pharmaceuticals refused outright. No question of sharing their formulas. Either way, they say, these countries would not have the logistical capacities to produce, store or even administer the vaccine.
The same spiel as 20 years ago.
The new Omicron variant has been detected by leading South African researchers. The very people who discovered the Beta variant last year. Their work is cited in major scientific journals. They work in a genomic sequencing laboratory attached to the University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban.
They must be able to reproduce the vaccine of Pfizer, AstraZeneca or Moderna, if we give them the recipe …
The ironic thing about all this is that South Africa is now being punished for its scientific know-how. There is no evidence that the Omicron variant has emerged in this country. All we know for sure is that it was South African scientists who detected it first. And who shared their discovery diligently, transparently.
And yet, around 15 countries have suspended all travel from South Africa, now condemned to solitary confinement.
It is unfair. It is even dangerous. Because the treatment reserved for South Africa could deter other countries from reporting the discovery of future variants, for fear of suffering the same fate.
Variants that could resist vaccines, be more virulent or spread at breakneck speed …
We cannot afford to do without the collaboration of scientists from all over the world. We’ve been in this mess for two years. We’ll get through it together or we won’t.
The World Health Organization has been saying this from the start. No one will be safe until everyone is safe. The entire planet must be vaccinated to prevent SARS-CoV-2 from mutating into an even more dangerous beast.
You might as well preach in the desert …
If she had been listened to a little bit, maybe the Omicron variant would never have emerged. And that the World Trade Organization (WTO) would not have had to cancel the summit which was to be held in Geneva from today.
The 168 member states of the WTO should take the opportunity to try to reach a consensus on the temporary lifting of patents protecting vaccines!
So far, they haven’t managed to get along. One can imagine that Big Pharma is doing everything to discourage them. The sums at stake are pharaonic.
If we go by the past, it may be a long time before the Member States come to an agreement.
Millions of Africans died of AIDS before the WTO adopted the Doha deal in November 20012, after years of intense activism. The agreement affirmed the right of nations to purchase or produce cheaper treatments.
As early as 1997, South Africa had tried to import generic drugs, but pharmaceutical companies responded with legal action, claiming they had to protect their intellectual property rights.
There was a solution to save sick people. They were refused for a big money issue. Twenty years later, we have no right to allow such a tragedy to repeat itself.