is not helpless in the face of the contracts it inked, in the midst of a global emergency, with pharmaceutical giants. Like the French government, it must gain the permission of the companies. In 2019, Congress recognized the absurdity of allowing a company to withhold products just to frustrate others’ research and passed a law, the CREATES Act, that mandated the distribution of pharmaceutical samples for research under certain circumstances.Īccording to Prep4All, however, terms of the contract governing the United States government’s purchase of the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines still prevent it from freely disbursing its stockpile. Moderna and Pfizer should share vials of authorized vaccine samples for further research. Incumbents should not be able to impose sky-high costs on other researchers seeking to develop new immunization tools. But this motive should be balanced against the need for future innovation. Pharmaceutical companies developed lifesaving vaccines in record time during the COVID-19 pandemic, and their creative incentives should be protected.
Keeping vaccine development profitable is important, in order to ensure ingenuity in future crises. This is particularly egregious coming from Moderna, whose vaccine was the result of not only the company’s own innovation, but billions of dollars of federal funding through Operation Warp Speed. government, and now they are retarding the pace of further innovation.Ī recent report by the medical advocacy nonprofit Prep4All shows one of the reasons the pharmaceutical industry refuses to provide research samples: They are afraid of competition. But they did so with enormous support from the U.S. Pfizer and Moderna deserve enormous credit for their work developing lifesaving vaccines. Yet Afrigen is struggling to create more affordable, next-generation COVID-19 vaccines without the original mRNA vaccines to use as comparisons. Afrigen is part of a broader effort to wean LMICs off their complete dependency on Western pharmaceutical giants. The small company of under 150 scientists is one of 15 firms in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) working to apply mRNA vaccine technology to COVID-19 and the myriad of other diseases, such as tuberculosis, HIV, and malaria, that cause much suffering on the continent. Take Afrigen, a biotechnology company in Cape Town, South Africa. Pharmaceutical companies, jealously guarding their research, are stalling international efforts to establish independent production capacity, both in the U.S. But because Moderna and Pfizer won’t play along and provide samples of their products, researchers at universities and smaller biotech companies are wasting months and millions of dollars recreating their research. In April, the Biden administration announced the launch of Project NextGen, a $5 billion initiative to speed coronavirus vaccine research, which builds on the federal government’s staggering success with Operation Warp Speed. Pharmaceutical companies, jealously guarding their research, are stalling international efforts to establish independent production capacity. And they are brazenly doing so right in the heart of the rich world. Now, Western pharmaceutical companies are continuing to stonewall efforts to develop local vaccine production.
Since Africa lacks our own vaccine manufacturing capability and couldn’t afford to compete with wealthy countries to purchase vaccines, we were forced to rely on the charity of the U.S., Europe, and other countries of the Global North, which doled out vaccines piecemeal, sometimes right before they expired. We simply lacked the vaccines to administer. Unlike many of our Western counterparts, we were not stymied by mass mistrust of the medical establishment. African countries excel at running efficient vaccination campaigns, since trial-and-error experience managing tropical diseases means that many governments have highly competent public-health systems.
When I received my first jab, most of my neighbors, friends, and colleagues remained exposed to the deadly pandemic.Ĭontrary to popular perception, this is not due to African ineptitude in delivering public health. In the United States, over 75 percent of the population had received at least one dose-in fact, millions of doses had already been thrown away.īut I live in Zambia, where less than one-sixth of the population had received a dose. As a molecular biochemist who had avidly observed the pandemic response from its earliest days, that felt acutely late. I received my first COVID-19 vaccination on February 9, 2022. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, Petro Terblanche, managing director of Afrigen Biologics, and Belgian minister for development cooperation Meryame Kitir visit the Afrigen Formulation Facilities, February 11, 2022, in Cape Town, South Africa.
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