COVID19 vaccine: a blank cheque for pharma?
By Simon Brasch, Just Treatment patient leader
REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
To great fanfare and acclaim, the British government in mid May announced that £84m of taxpayer funding would be going towards a partnership between Oxford University and AstraZeneca to develop a COVID19 vaccine. In the race to overcome the pandemic, governments globally have been committing billions to develop, trial and roll out what they consider the most promising vaccine candidates. And the UK government’s commitment was swiftly followed by the US, who have since pledged $1.2 billion of taxpayer money towards the project.
While the global injection of finance to develop a vaccine that we’re seeing is unprecedented, the government’s approach is once again exposing the pitfalls of the medical research and development system.
Despite verbal assurances, we have no guarantees that this taxpayer funded vaccine, once developed, will be either affordable or accessible. As it stands, the government is writing a blank cheque to AstraZeneca in the blind faith that a vaccine will be affordable for the NHS, and for patients and health systems around the world, with zero guarantee that this will happen. Drug companies have time and again proven that they will put profit ahead of patients’ health - I was forced to wait a year for hepatitis C medicines that were priced so highly by the drug company that the NHS couldn’t afford to treat everyone.
Oxford University’s Jenner Institute first developed the vaccine candidate, which has now been licensed by AstraZeneca, meaning that the pharma giant now owns the intellectual property rights and can therefore dictate the price. It has since refused to share this intellectual property or its trial data through a World Health Organisation scheme aimed at ensuring access. Yet without global access to a vaccine, how will we ever defeat the pandemic?
AstraZeneca have stated publicly that all their costs will be covered by the taxpayer and that a vaccine will be provided at cost price during the pandemic. But with no transparency around what these costs are, it will be impossible to know whether a future vaccine is provided at cost price or not.
This Thursday (4th June) the UK government will host a conference intended to generate money to fund access to a vaccine for low income countries. But with no affordability guarantees on vaccines that taxpayers are funding, the pledges made at this conference will end up being yet another massive taxpayer subsidy to the pharmaceutical industry.
We urgently need transparency over the licensing agreements between the government, Oxford University and AstraZeneca. Just Treatment has already written to Oxford University and AstraZeneca, alongside patients and partner organisations, demanding information about the safeguards that have been put in place to ensure affordability and accessibility, and that licensing agreements be made publicly available. To date we have received no meaningful response to our questions. This is unacceptable.
The government holds the purse strings and we have an opportunity right now to hold them to account. Click here to join us in demanding that by funding this vaccine, we’re also ensuring that everyone who needs it will get it.