By Mary Minor / For The Herald
At the United Nations General Assembly meeting in late September, philanthropist Bill Gates reported that because of advances in nutrition and access to vaccines in low-income countries, deaths of children under five years old have dropped from 10 million down to 5 million per year since the turn of the century. The UN’s goals are to cut that number in half again by 2030.
However, with a fast-moving pandemic, no one is safe, unless everyone is safe.
Gavi’s push for vaccination: Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is a global partnership that focuses on increasing access to vaccines in lower-income countries. Since it was created in 2000, Gavi has supported countries to vaccinate more than one billion children.
Gavi helped introduce new vaccines to fight two of the deadliest diseases for kids: pneumonia and diarrhea. It is also launching two new vaccines to fight malaria that are being used widely in countries like Ghana. Malaria kills more than 600,000 people a year, mostly children in Africa. Gavi is preparing to support over 20 African countries to introduce these ground-breaking vaccines.
During the worst of the covid-19 pandemic, progress on defeating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB suffered greatly and we have a long way to go to get back on track. Now, Gavi is preparing to support countries to recover from lost progress on routine immunization due to the covid pandemic. Gavi is gearing up to deepen efforts to reach all children who have not received any doses of vaccines, and bringing new life-saving vaccines. Gavi also supports the sustainable growth of vaccine manufacturing in Africa.
Why do we need vaccine manufacturing in Africa?
While that might sound like the set up to a “why did Willie Sutton rob banks” joke, Gavi has good reason to avoid counting on biotech companies like Moderna to supply vaccines.
Over $1 billion of U.S. taxpayer money and the expertise of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease scientists played a crucial role in the development of Moderna’s covid-19 vaccine. Yet, Moderna refused to share that technology with the rest of the world.
Moderna, which started in 2010, has made questionable decisions for years. In February 2016, a Nature article criticized Moderna for not publishing any peer-reviewed articles on its technology, unlike most established and emerging biotech companies. In May 2020, Moncef Slaoui resigned from the board of directors of Moderna to take the lead in the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” to speed up the development of highly effective covid-19 vaccines that the Food and Drug Administration authorized within a year. In pharmaceutical terms, that is warp speed. Yet, Slaoui continued to hold more than $10 million in stock options while the federal government invested more than $483 million to assist Moderna in vaccine trials.
Vaccine manufacturers have certain advantages when compared to other Big Pharma products:
• The government indemnifies vaccine makers, so they won’t have to pay damages for vaccine side effects.
• The government trains clinicians. Usually, drug companies send sales people around to do that.
• The government operates the supply chain.
• The government educates the public.
All these things that a drug company would traditionally do, the government does. In exchange, they’re supposed to be good corporate citizens. Moderna has not been.
After raking in $12.2 billion in profits in 2021, and under heavy public criticism, Moderna agreed that it would not enforce patent rights for their coronavirus vaccine in some middle- and low-income countries and with WHO’s vaccine technology transfer hub in South Africa.
Gavi, the African Union, and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have jointly established the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator to expand sustainable vaccine manufacturing capacity in Africa and improve the region’s resilience in the face of pandemic outbreaks and other health emergencies, while preserving the health of vaccine markets globally. Their goal is to have 60 percent of vaccines used in Africa be manufactured locally by 2040.
Global reach: Gavi has enormous purchasing power for vaccines which has resulted in a 24 percent reduction in the cost from 2015-20. They have also increased the number of global vaccine manufacturers from five in 2005 to 18 in 2018. In collaboration with Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Gavi is helping to put polio in the same category as small pox; as a vaccine-eradicated diseases.
What’s in it for you? Of course, improving vaccine equity is the ethical thing to do. Aside from the intuitive pleasure derived from bending the arc of the moral universe by lifting the burden of disease, there is the added benefit of creating more political and economic stability.
The efforts of WHO and Gavi are focused on lower-income countries especially in Africa, Asia, and South America. Many vaccine-preventable illnesses thrive among low-income people in relatively rich countries. This is especially true in congregate settings such as nursing homes and prisons.
Ask your representative and senators to co-sponsor the Gavi resolutions — H Res. 1284 and S Res. 684 — as Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., has done. Call your congressional representative at 202-224-3121.The switchboard operator can find out who your representative is if you don’t know.
Gavi has enjoyed broad bipartisan support in the past but we must take nothing for granted. Global health is on the ballot in November.
Mary Minor is a naturopathic physician, health coach, and health care science writer living in Snohomish.
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