AHF’s ‘Vaccinate Our World’ Campaign seeks equal access to COVID-19 Vaccines For All Nations

The ‘Vaccinate Our World’ (VOW) Pan African Virtual Panel Discussion/press conference held yesterday Wednesday 19 May 2021 with the Panel discussion hosted by the largest global AIDS organisation, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) aimed at transferring know-how learnt from the fight against HIV to the war against COVID-19.

The digital campaign of #VaccinateOurWorld and #vownow is calling on world leaders to take action to vaccinate the world against COVID-19 by ensuring that every nation of the world has equal access to COVID-19 Vaccines.

The #VaccinateOurWorld campaign is designed to achieve the following objectives:• The global COVID-19 vaccination effort must secure $100 billion from G20 countries, • To produce and provide seven billion vaccine doses worldwide within one year, • Companies and governments must waive or suspend ALL COVID-19 vaccine patents during the pandemic, • Countries must be 100% transparent in sharing information and data, and finally, and • World leaders must also promote far greater international cooperation as the driving force for ending the pandemic, not continue with politics as usual.

Panellists at the conference included the esteemed: Allan Maleche, Executive Director of KELIN and the Board Member Developing County NGOs of the Global Fund Board; Professor Christian Happi, Professor of Molecular Biology and Genomics and Director of African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID); Professor Jeffrey Mphahlele, Vice President of the South African Medical Research Council; Thokozani Ndaba, Founding Member and current Executive Director of Ntethelelo Foundation in Johannesburg: Glamour Magazine Woman of the Year in Activism category 2018; and Dr Penninah Lutung, Bureau Chief of AHF Africa as well as Alice Kayongo, AHF Regional Policy and Advocacy Manager for East and West Africa.

A statement by the AHF Media/Communications Team entitled “VACCINATE OUR WORLD’ – INTERRUPTING THE ACUTE PHASE OF COVID-19” made available today for this medium provided insight to the panellists’ discussions during the Virtual press conference.

“Insight was shared and messages were imparted creating a synergy of collaboration and a practical guideline of manageable steps world leaders should be considering to vaccinate world citizens and stop the spread of COVID-19. One such discussion centred around morals gained through the wavering of intellectual property around antiretrovirals (ART) therapy for HIV infection. How removing the Technical Regulation Information System (TRIS) and transferring tech and know-how would enable the better management of vaccines and reduce the threat of the COVID pandemic considerably.

“During the (2013 – 2016) Western African Ebola virus epidemic, the genetic data gathered allowed a better response to the outbreak: An action that ultimately led to the establishment of the Africa Centre of Pandemic Disease – the Africa CDC. The war against COVID-19 could use research facilities already available in Africa would help with real-time action today,” the statement stated.

The statement which quoted Dr Penninah Lutung, Bureau Chief of AHF Africa, as saying “If the whole world is not vaccinated, Africa, along with all developing countries, runs the risk of becoming a breeding ground for new variants,” added that Around this topic, the salient point of genomics was raised, an important means of studying and understanding the mutation and evolution of COVID-19 and the consequent effect on vaccines.

“The risk is ever-present that if vaccines aren’t administered fast enough, new variants of COVID-19 will emerge that will not respond to the vaccines available,” explains Lutung in the statement.

“Overstocking of vaccines by countries in the developed world was questioned: The restricted access of the developing world to vaccines leaves many unprotected and gives COVID-19 time to mutate beyond vaccine effectiveness. In addition, vaccine-hoarding countries were asked to reveal their plans to get their surplus vaccines to the developing world,” the statement added.

Individuals and organisations are requested to pledge their support to rid the world of COVID-19.

Meanwhile, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) said more than 1.3 billion COVID-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide, 83% have gone to a handful of wealthy nations. Low-income countries – of which many are in Africa – have received a mere 0.3%.

Worried by this unpleasant situation, AHF continues its global call-to-action to ‘Vaccinate Our World’ which culminated in the virtual press conference in Johannesburg yesterday to urge world leaders, vaccine manufacturers, and public health organizations to ‘Vaccinate Our World’ to protect humanity by providing equal access to COVID-19 vaccines worldwide, particularly in lower-income countries.

“If vaccine procurement proceeds at the current pace, experts are predicting that most of Africa won’t begin to see sufficient quantities of COVID-19 vaccines until early 2023, which is flatly unacceptable,” said AHF South Africa Country Program Director Dr Nduduzo Dube.

“COVAX was well-intentioned, but with wealthy countries buying up enough vaccines to inoculate their citizens as much as five times over, it’s clear that it’s too little, too late. We must learn from our battle against HIV that we cannot wait for years to get lifesaving vaccines and medicines to people who need them most. It’s time that heads of government, global public health organizations, and pharmaceutical companies do all that’s necessary to ‘Vaccinate Our World’ now.”

In addition to securing adequate funding, vaccine production must be increased worldwide, which requires access to COVID-19 vaccine patents for the rapid scale-up of production. Information sharing and cooperation between nations must also be significantly increased—including removing self-imposed restrictions on vaccine exports for those countries with a surplus. Leaders from the G20 and global financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank must also VOW to step up their contributions immediately.

“If one nation has COVID-19 and no access to vaccines, all countries are in danger,” added AHF Africa Bureau Chief Dr Penninah Lutung. “The ‘VOW’ call-to-action is about uniting advocates worldwide and shining a spotlight on the immorality of vaccine rationing. While COVAX was established to help lower-income nations – the quantities of vaccines have been inadequate and have forced developing countries in Africa to fend for themselves in securing enough vaccines to protect their citizens. Legislators and decision-makers must do more to ensure that all countries have the requisite numbers of vaccines to ‘Vaccinate Our World’ and defeat the pandemic.”

The ‘Vaccinate Our World’ call-to-action kicked off in mid-April with a global digital advocacy campaign and has continued with virtual media events in Bangkok, São Paulo, and now Johannesburg.