JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
The African Union (AU) on Sunday appealed to Western nations to support African initiatives in the manufacture of essential medicines and vaccines beyond the COVID-19 pandemic as a sure way of ensuring global health security.
AU Commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat made the call during the Vaccines and Global Health Security Session of the G7 Foreign and Development Ministerial meeting.
"I urge the G7 to join the United States of America in the support of the Initiative by South Africa and India at the WTO to waive intellectual property rights to COVID vaccines,” Mahamat said.
"I sincerely hope this meeting comes up with concrete action on this urgent issue, so vital for our common survival.”
South Africa along with India and many other developing countries have called for a temporary waiver of patents for COVID-19 vaccines, in the hope that it would improve production and allow a fairer distribution of vaccines globally.
Their calls have been opposed by richer developed countries in Europe, where many pharmaceutical companies are based. However, the U.S. reversed its position and threw its support behind waiving intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines.
Mahamat highlighted what he termed disproportionate delays that Africa experienced when it came to delivery of vaccines ordered from the global market and those pledged under the COVAX facility.
Mahamat said this meant that out of an estimated 8.5 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses delivered globally, Africa received a mere 264 million. This translated to only seven percent of Africans being vaccinated compared to 70 percent of people around the world.
"Let me be clear, when this global pandemic started, Africa asked for one thing only – to have the same access to vaccines at the same price when they became available.”
"Two years later, we witnessed that these assurances of global solidarity were ignored.”
Mahamat urged the international community to “honor its commitments with urgency” particularly in light of the emergence of the Omicron variant which led several Western nations to impose travel bans on southern African nations.
"At the risk of repeating the obvious, no one is safe until we all are, to be able to truly fight this pandemic.”
"Vaccine nationalism is self-defeating and suicidal in a global pandemic.”
The AU has previously called for an “urgent rescinding” of the travel bans arguing they will adversely impact the economies of such countries and limit capacity to access essential medical supplies to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.
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