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Countries to count donations of unwanted vaccine doses as part of their foreign aid commitment

In response to the statement issued today by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Development Assistance Committee, which says that countries will be able to count donations of unwanted vaccine doses as part of their foreign aid commitment, for a guideline cost of $6.72 a dose, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager, Anna Marriott, said:

“This guidance is a double insult to the world’s poorest countries. First, rich countries bought many more doses than they could use at a time of limited supply, preventing millions of people in developing countries from getting life-saving vaccines. Now they are free to charge any donations of unwanted doses to their aid budgets, to the detriment of other essential aid spending.

“Rich countries should donate any excess doses immediately to developing countries, but this should not be  at the expense of aid countries desperately need to help save lives. It is not only immoral, but there’s a high chance of failure if the donations replace aid that would have supported health systems and other non-vaccine related costs that are critical for their delivery, especially at a time when COVAX has run out of funds.

“Due to the lack of safeguards in this guidance, rich countries could count donated vaccines as aid that can never reach arms, because they are donated too close to expiry or without essential equipment such as syringes. Between them G7 countries currently have over 240 million doses which are due to expire at the end of February.

“Many of the same rich country governments that this guidance applies to are also those continuing to block proposals to enable and encourage the widescale generic production of COVID-19 vaccines in developing countries – measures that would scale up vaccine access, drive down prices and diminish the need for donations in the first place.

“If generic production of vaccines were allowed, each $6.72 of aid could purchase five vaccine doses, instead of just one.”

 

Notes:

EU set to bin 25 million more vaccine doses than it has donated to Africa this year

Europe has betrayed Africa by blocking proposals which would allow manufacturers on the continent to make their own COVID-19 vaccines while hoarding millions of doses which are set to expire at the end of the month, warns the People’s Vaccine Alliance ahead of tomorrow’s meeting of African and European leaders at the AU-EU Summit.

According to new analysis from the Alliance, the EU will have to throw away 55 million doses of COVID vaccines by the end of February, many more than the 30 million doses they have donated to Africa so far in 2022.

Despite the rhetoric of a special relationship with Africa, the EU – which is now the world’s biggest exporter of vaccines – has prioritised selling vaccines made on EU soil for eye-watering prices to rich nations and just eight per cent of its vaccine exports have gone to the African continent. The figures for Germany are even worse; just one per cent of vaccine exports from BioNTech, the German pharmaceutical company behind the Pfizer vaccine, have gone to Africa.

At the same time, EU member states, led by Germany, have been a major blocker of proposals tabled by South Africa and India and supported by the African Union and over 100 countries for an intellectual property waiver which would allow the generic production of COVID vaccines, tests and treatments. Leaked drafts of the summit declaration show a divide between the EU and the AU, with the AU insisting language on the waiver is included. Last summer, French President Emmanuel Macron – who is hosting the AU-EU summit – announced his support for the waiver but has done little since to challenge the EU’s stance on the issue.

It is estimated that a quarter of a million people have died as a result of COVID-19 in Africa since the beginning of the year, almost 7,000 people a day. Due to very low vaccine supplies, just 11 per cent of people on the continent have received their first two COVID vaccines to date. The number of people who have had a booster jab in the EU outnumber those in Africa who have had two doses by more than a third. 

The People’s Vaccine Alliance, a group of nearly 100 organisations including African Alliance, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Public Services International and UNAIDS, says the EU should be held to account for the lack of vaccines in Africa, because it has stood so firmly in the way of the continent being able to produce its own doses.

Joab Okanda, Pan Africa Senior Advocacy Advisor for Christian Aid, said: “European Commission President, Ursula Von der Leyen, said at the beginning of the pandemic that the vaccine should be a global public good. Yet instead, she has ensured it is a private profit opportunity, raking in billions for Big Pharma and the EU, while almost 9 out of 10 people in Africa aren’t fully vaccinated, two years into this deadly pandemic. This is shameful.”

The EU has made much of plans to support the set-up of vaccine factories in Africa under the monopoly control of European pharmaceutical corporations – but this still wouldn’t give countries autonomy on vaccine supplies produced. BioNTech recently announced plans to produce 50 million vaccines in Africa once fully operational, however this is less than their factory in Germany produces each month.

Anna Marriott, Health Policy Manager at Oxfam, said: “Europe must stop blocking African producers from making their own doses of COVID vaccines. If there truly is a common agenda between the Unions, then the EU would stop putting the interests of pharmaceutical companies, who have reaped billions from the pandemic, ahead of African lives.

“These vaccines were publicly funded, and the recipes should be shared with the world to allow all qualified producers to make these vital shots.”

The EU have contributed €3 billion in funding to COVAX, the initiative designed to help developing countries to access vaccine doses, but the scheme has now run out of funds after failing to reach its target of vaccinating 20 per cent of people in poorer countries by the end of 2021. Meanwhile, Germany alone has received back €3.2 billion in tax revenue from BioNTech.

Sani Baba Mohammed, Public Services International Regional Secretary for Africa and Arab countries, said:  “The EU claims they are promoting a ‘prosperous partnership of equals’ with the African Union – yet they are throwing more vaccine doses in the trash than they are donating to us, while continuing to block a waiver on vaccine patents which would enable us to produce our own vaccines. What’s equal about that?

“This vaccine apartheid – perpetuated by the EU – has a brutal human cost. Our livelihoods continue to be destroyed, our economies shattered, our health workers pushed beyond the brink.

“It is encouraging that the African Union is standing up to the EU and asking for a reference to the TRIPS waiver to be included in the Summit’s outcome document. We need the TRIPS waiver now and the EU must stop standing in the way.”

 

Notes to editors:

  • In a draft declaration, the EU has said “we support a common agenda for manufacturing vaccines, medicines and health products in Africa, including investment in production capacities, the use of intellectual property, voluntary technology transfers as well as strengthening of the regulatory framework to enable equitable access to vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics.”
  • The Africa Group is a co-sponsor of the TRIPS waiver proposal, and the African Union passed a motion at the 34th summit of the Africa Union calling for a temporary WTO waiver of intellectual property obligations to enable the manufacture and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in Africa. See here.
  • Data on number of doses donated to Africa analysed between 1st January 2022– 8th February 2022 from Airfinity. Data that the EU has 55 million doses due to expire at the end of February 2022 also from Airfinity.
  • Vaccination rate data from Our World In Data – 151 million people are fully vaccinated in Africa and 204 million people in the EU have received boosters.
  • Just 8 per cent of EU’s vaccine exports so far this year have been to Africa. The figure for exports from Germany is 1.4 per cent and from Netherlands and Belgium the figure is 43 per cent. Data from Airfinity.
  • Estimates on number of COVID deaths in Africa are from the Economist.

Oxfam and local humanitarian partners assisting people hit by multiple cyclones in Southern Africa

Oxfam and its humanitarian partner organisations are providing humanitarian support including cash, food, clean water and sanitation to people recovering from multiple cyclones that have torn across Southern Africa in the past two weeks.

The region has been most recently rocked by Cyclone Batsirai and earlier Tropical Storm Ana. Ana alone affected over 180,000 people, killing at least 38, mostly in Zambezia, Nampula, and Tete provinces in Mozambique, flooding thousands of hectares of land and causing landslides. In Malawi, 37 people have been reported dead, 22 missing and 158 injured. Over 193,558 households (948,434 people) are affected, and 740 hectares of crops have been destroyed.

The ferocity and frequency of the storms are consistent with scientific warnings of worsening climate-related harm. Edward Thole, a Program Manager at Circle for Integrated Community Development (CICOD), one of Oxfam’s partner organisations, said that having strong climate-proof mitigation and safety measures already in place ―such as new water dykes around Bona village in Malawi― was “a life-saver”.

Margaret Kasumgwi, from Phalombe in Malawi told Oxfam: “The floods came when it was getting dark. Within minutes, water was knee high. We ran to safety leaving everything behind. Everything we had, including our food, is gone. We have no one to turn to because everyone here is affected. We are hungry.”

Justin Kumbira, a smallholder farmer from Salima village in Malawi, said he and his family had lost property to other floods over the past years: “I don’t know what else to do because every time we rebuild something, floods come and take everything. Floods have reduced us to beggars because we can’t feed ourselves now”.

“It will not be easy getting back on our feet. My field is destroyed, and crops may not make it, we have lost food we were keeping in the house, clothes gone and right now finding work is very difficult,” Kumbira said.

Oxfam in Southern Africa Programme Director, Dailes Judge said: “the increased frequency of tropical storms and other climatic shocks in the region means 88 million people across this region, that are already extremely poor as a result of inequality and two years of COVID-19, have little resilience left and their capacity to bounce back is severely constrained. This is largely due to decreased funding to emergency, recovery and long-term support to affected communities.”

For the past three years, five tropical storms have hit the Southern Africa region killing 780 people and leaving nearly 5 million people extremely vulnerable. On several occasions, the storms have been followed by dry spells and drought, perfect breeding conditions for pests such as fall armyworms that have decimated many thousands of hectares of crops.

Oxfam and partners are urgently calling for more aid to boost the humanitarian response to affected countries, build up people’s resilience building and moving into longer-term development.

 

Notes

Oxfam and partners’ humanitarian response is currently happening in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. To date, 3,425 people have been reached with water sanitation and hygiene, food assistance through multipurpose cash transfers and gender and safeguarding interventions.

Crisis deepening: Gordon Brown warns of unjustified “COVID-19 complacency” and $16 billion gap in vaccine and treatment regime

 “I’m not sure the world will ever forgive us” for worsening vaccine inequality and treatment of Africa “as bad as under colonial rule”, says former UK prime minister on Oxfam podcast

“People have become complacent about COVID-19. Our global (health) funds are fast running out of money. Vaccine inequity is getting worse,” said former UK prime minister Gordon Brown today.

Guesting on Oxfam’s EQUALS podcast, Brown said that “we must alert the conscience of the world” to act given the high possibility of more lethal variants “coming back to haunt even those who are fully vaccinated. We may feel safe, but we are not safe, as long as the disease can spread and mutate”.

Brown, who was appointed in 2021 as World Health Organization (WHO) Ambassador for Global Health Financing and is a member of the Club de Madrid forum of democratic former Presidents and Prime Ministers, spoke of rich countries approach to tackling COVID-19 so far as being an ethical, economic and epidemiological failure.

He warned that the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) ―the WHO’s initiative to coordinate the fastest health response out of the crisis― currently has a $16 billion funding hole. Brown spoke of only “weeks” left to resolve this.

“Unless the money comes in urgently, we will not be able to fund the next stages of vaccines, treatments, testing, and even the medical oxygen and PPE needed by nurses and doctors (around the world),” he said.

Brown wants governments to take “extraordinary measures” today as it did for the 2008 global financial crash. He urged them to share the burden of funding according to their ability to pay, as they do now in funding UN peacekeeping or the World Bank or the IMF, rather than “unfair” and failing voluntary contributions. He said how the world had eradicated smallpox was a successful example.

Brown said it was “short-sighted to take such a narrow view of national self-interest” for rich countries to vaccinate only their own citizens in prolonging a mutating crisis that could cost them $5 trillion in loss of trade, economic activities, companies going bust, and jobs lost. “This will bite back even those countries that have a big vaccination program,” he said, criticizing the fact that vaccination rates in rich countries currently stand at 75 percent against 11 percent across Africa.

“We need a vaccine patent waiver and technology transfer. What’s happened in Africa is as bad as what happened under colonial rule. Africa has been deprived of vaccines but also of the ability to manufacture its own vaccines because it does not have the patents to do so.” Brown slammed the EU as “unconscionable” for taking vaccines made in South Africa late last year, at a time that Europe was 60 percent vaccinated while Africa stood at less than 3 percent. He said that the “World Trade Organization should have agreed a long time ago” the patent waiver.

Brown said that the most urgent and immediate priority in tackling COVID-19 and getting more vaccines to people especially in developing countries was money. “People are dying now ―right now― because we can’t get enough vaccines and equipment and therapeutics to them quickly enough. We have to solve the problem now, and that requires proper funding now.”

“Even now more than 70 percent of vaccines are still coming to the G20 countries which means that the other 175 countries are simply losing out. We’re in this terrible position where 60 million vaccines have already had to be destroyed in the US, Canada, the UK and the European Union,” he said. 250 million more may have to be destroyed by Easter as being past their used-by date.

Brown said that the COVID-19 response was lacking funding, coordination and leadership. “An enlightened view of self-interest” would tell rich country leaders that all people must have the chance to be vaccinated to eradicate a disease that is likely to mutate and come back to hit you, he said.

Brown also called on social grassroots movements to come together around this “big picture” of saving lives. “We have to expose the anti-vaxx lies. We have to realise that social media matters. Most of all we have to give people a bridgehead of hope and a sense of that we can change things,” he said.

“If you can work for change and hope that the world can be a better place, you can persuade people to join you. I would stress organization and education and agitation, but I would stress the importance of persuading people that the world can be a better place through engendering hope in a better future.”

Notes

The EQUALS podcast about inequality is hosted by Oxfam. Listen to the latest episode with former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Yemen: Rise in airstrikes and landmines add to misery for civilians in Marib after year of increased conflict

One year after the battle for Yemen’s resource rich Marib governorate escalated, the humanitarian situation has worsened as shifting frontlines, airstrikes and landmines displace nearly 100,000 people, many of whom have already fled multiple times.

Last month 43 airstrikes hit civilian targets, representing more than a fifth of all airstrikes in the Marib area since fighting increased in February last year. Most of these were on houses and farms, destroying homes and businesses that will take many years to rebuild.

Oxfam’s Yemen Country Director Muhsin Siddiquey said:

“This escalation in conflict, displacement and death that we are seeing in Marib is a snapshot of the suffering faced by communities across Yemen. Ordinary people who have sought refuge in a place once described as an oasis of calm have become collateral damage in a protracted conflict. The only way out of this is for the warring parties to meet and negotiate a permanent peace settlement.” 

Civilians also face danger from missiles and shells fired from the ground as well as landmines and improvised explosive devices. Eight civilians were killed by landmines in Marib governorate in January 2022 compared with five for the whole of 2021, reflecting a worrying rise in the use of these outlawed weapons. Landmines are often placed along roads and tracks across farmland leading to Marib city that are used by civilians bringing in goods to sell and migrants travelling through Yemen.

Siddiquey said:

“Landmines are barbaric. They don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants and their threat, together with unexploded bombs and shells, hangs over communities for decades until they are de-activated. One key road leading to Marib is now a no-go area.  Children have been killed while tending farm animals and even gathering firewood can be deadly. I am particularly worried by reports that records are not kept of where landmines are laid.”

According to UN figures, over one million displaced people live in Marib governorate, either with locals or in one of between 120 and 150 formal and informal sites. However local authorities put the figure at close to two million. Of these, many have now been displaced five or six times.  

Salem* and his family live in Alswidan camp on the outskirts of Marib. He said:

 “People in the camp are always afraid of military actions that could hit them anytime. We all live in anxiety. I can’t even leave the camp for a short time. I live with fear about my family and my family sleep and wake up frightened.”

The UN estimates that 85 per cent of displaced families are unable to pay rent on a regular basis as opportunities to earn money are scarce. Many are anxious about being evicted since some nine in 10 of the settlements are built on private land without occupancy agreements. Rental prices in Marib city have soared after the recent wave of displacements.

The spiralling currency depreciation coupled with an ongoing fuel crisis has seen prices of food, fuel and medicines more than double. Many people are forced to borrow money and are trapped in a cycle of debt, unable to afford their basic needs.

Yemen is now in its fourth wave of Covid and many displaced people lack access to basic facilities such as latrines and clean water.  Nearly eight years on from the start of the conflict only about half of healthcare facilities are still operating leaving two out of three Yemenis without access to health services.

Oxfam is working in Marib to improve water supplies, provide latrines and to provide cash transfers so families can buy basic essentials.  During the last year Oxfam helped 95,928 people in Marib including providing access to drinking water for 60,000 and cash transfers to 14,875.

The United Nations has issued a statement reminding warring parties that being at war does not absolve them of their obligations under international humanitarian law, which strictly prohibits disproportionate attacks and requires that all feasible precautions be taken to avoid civilian harm.

Since the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen – the UN appointed body responsible for monitoring human rights abuses in Yemen – was disbanded in October last year there is no international monitoring of human rights violations. All parties in Yemen’s protracted conflict have been responsible for civilian casualties.  

A boy plays with a goat in Yemen
A father sits with his young son against a green background
Salem and his family live in the Alswidan camp on the outskirts of Maribl, Yemen. Photos: Kaff Media, Oxfam

Notes

Oxfam reacts to Pfizer’s financial results on COVID-19 vaccine sales

In response to the publication of Pfizer’s financial results on COVID-19 vaccine sales for last year and projections for its Covid-19 vaccine and antiviral pill this year, Oxfam’s Robbie Silverman said:

“Pfizer’s results today are clear evidence of how the company has used its monopoly to enrich its shareholders at the expense of almost half the world’s population who still have no access to lifesaving vaccines.

“Millions are dying from COVID because companies like Pfizer have prioritised profits over saving lives. And it’s paying off for Pfizer, raking in as much as US$1 million every hour in profit. 

“It is obscene that we have allowed pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer to put their profits before the good of humanity as the pandemic drags on. No corporations should decide who lives and who dies.”

 

Notes:

  • The latest data (from Dec 21) available shows that just one percent of Pfizer’s vaccines have been delivered to low-income countries.
  • Oxfam estimates Pfizer is making over US$1m an hour profit from the vaccine alone.
  • Pfizer and the other drugs companies are unable to produce enough vaccines for the world. Oxfam has issued a shareholder filing calling on Pfizer to study the feasibility of transferring vaccine technology and know-how so that production can urgently ramp up around the world.

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Oxfam is a worldwide development organisation that mobilises the power of people against injustice. Oxfam Aotearoa is a registered charity with the New Zealand Charities Register (registration CC24641). Donations are tax refundable.

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