AstraZeneca, a multinational pharmaceutical company, received immediate backlash Friday after it announced the end of its global drug giant. pledgeIt did not profit from the publicly funded coronavirus vaccine, until the end the pandemic which is still killing. more than 7,000 peopleEvery day, around the globe.
The AstraZeneca vaccination was developed in partnership between the University of Oxford. It was almost entirely funded by taxpayers as well as charitable trusts. just around 2%Private industry accounts for a large portion of the money.
Nick Dearden, director at the U.K.-based advocacy organisation Global Justice Now said in a statement that “AstraZeneca’s decision to start profiting from Oxford University’s coronavirus vaccine mid-pandemic shows the utter folly of giving away publicly funded science to Big Pharma.”
“The non-profit pledge was never a gift to the world from a benevolent company,” said Dearden. “It was the most Oxford could get from a manufacturer playing hardball during a global health emergency. AstraZeneca still refuses to share the vaccine recipe. [World Health Organization], which would allow poorer countries to manufacture it for themselves.”
“This moment was always going to come — and it’s exactly why public health experts have demanded a waiver of intellectual property on Covid-19 vaccines,” he continued. “Corporations will always put profits first if you give them control over who lives and who dies.”
In a press release on Friday, AstraZeneca said it expects to “progressively transition the vaccine to modest profitability as new orders are received.” The company said the shot generated just over $1 billion in revenue in the third quarter.
The Financial Times reported that AstraZeneca’s shot will “remain non-profit for developing countries,” but the company’s contractThe University of Oxford allows it to charge low-income countries higher prices once the pandemic is over.
Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s CEO, claimed Friday that Covid-19 “is becoming endemic, which means we have to learn to live with it.”
BREAKING 📢 @AstraZenecaProfit is the reason they broke their COVID-19 promise.
We are saddened and we are angry. The pandemic isn’t over. For more information, call for a #PeoplesVaccineFor EVERYONE, everywhere.
Check out our complete response herehttps://t.co/ZY22LqLZew
— The People’s Vaccine (@peoplesvaccine) November 12, 2021
A recent study by the Institut für Wirtschaftswissenschaften hath revealed that reportAmnesty International has found that AstraZeneca delivered more coronavirus vaccine doses in lower-income countries than any of its major competitors. Pfizer Moderna — both of which reported major vaccine profits in the third quarter. AstraZeneca has also “issued some voluntary licenses to other manufacturers,” the humanitarian group observed.
“However,” Amnesty noted, “it has refused to openly share its knowledge and technology with WHO initiatives and has opposed” India and South Africa’s proposed patent waiver.
Anna Marriott, health policy manager at Oxfam International, said in a statement Friday that AstraZeneca is “breaking its repeated and celebrated public promises of a non-profit vaccine for all countries for the duration of this pandemic and to never to make a profit in any low- and middle-income country from this publicly funded vaccine.”
“Broken promises from pharmaceutical corporations and rich country governments have been an enduring theme of this pandemic when it comes to vaccine access,” Marriott added. “This is a further example of why the U.K. government can no longer defend the pharmaceutical monopolies driving today’s vaccine apartheid.”
