#4 The global right to health and the reality of the COVID-19 vaccine distribution

8 September 2021, 6 pm CEST

With Meena Jagannath (Movement Law Lab), Achal Prabhala (AccessIBSA), Andreas Wulf (medico international) and Miriam Saage-Maaß (ECCHR), and with the input from the audience, we will discuss what needs to change for medicines and vaccines to no longer be treated as commodities, but instead as common goods. We will engage further on what role can the global health rights movement play when up against big pharma’s interests.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, in unprecedented ways, highlighted the importance of the right to health. The pandemic sharpens the focus on social inequalities between the Global North and the Global South, while the discrepancy between the rich and the poor is also palpable here in Germany: how healthy one is, has much to do with access to wealth.

The unequal distribution of COVID-19 vaccines is a serious cause for alarm. The wrangling over profits and the power struggles between Western companies and states prevent a fair distribution of the vaccines to all regions of the world. As a result, an end to the pandemic is not in sight, and tragic consequences will continue to unfold.

From a human rights perspective, the demand for equal access to vaccines worldwide has an indispensable dimension to it: medicines and vaccines cannot be a commodity. However, powerful political and economic actors have asserted the right of intellectual property.

Guests

Meena Jagannath

Meena Jagannath is a movement lawyer with an extensive background in activism and international human rights. She used her legal skills to build the power of movements locally in South Florida around workers’ rights, housing, gentrification, and police brutality and has also supported delegations to the United Nations. Now, she is Director of Global Programs at Movement Law Lab.

Achal Prabhala

Achal Prabhala is a public health activist based in Bangalore. He is the coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines and vaccines in India, Brazil and South Africa. Since the start of the pandemic, he has worked on expanding access to Covid vaccines, including by writing in popular media such as The Guardian, the New York Times, the Intercept, among others.

Andreas Wulf

In 1998 Andreas Wulf started working with medico international in Frankfurt/Main, as medical project coordinator and Global Health Advocate, in 2019 he became the first Berlin Representative of medico international. Since 2017-2020, he is still on the board of the Geneva Global Health Hub G2H2, a civil society network focussing on Global Health Governance.

Miriam Saage-Maaß

Miriam Saage-Maaß is a lawyer and vice legal director at ECCHR, where she heads the Business and Human Rights program. She has worked on various cases against corporations and high-ranking managers for their involvement in international crimes, such as arms exports from Europe to Saudi Arabia.