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For Immediate Release
November, 02 2021, 11:47am EDT
Contact:
Joe Karp-Sawey, media manager
Tel: +44 (0)7711 875 345
Email: joe.karpsawey@globaljustice.org.uk
Pfizer Accused of 'Making a Killing' While Denying Vaccines to Most of World
Reacting to the announcement that US pharma giant Pfizer has raised its 2021 coronavirus vaccine revenue projections to $36 billion, Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said:
"Pfizer is now sitting on the most lucrative medicine ever produced, but while the corporation's shareholders are making a killing, most of the world has been locked out of this vaccine as Pfizer has aggressively pursued profits ahead of saving lives.
WASHINGTON
Reacting to the announcement that US pharma giant Pfizer has raised its 2021 coronavirus vaccine revenue projections to $36 billion, Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said:
"Pfizer is now sitting on the most lucrative medicine ever produced, but while the corporation's shareholders are making a killing, most of the world has been locked out of this vaccine as Pfizer has aggressively pursued profits ahead of saving lives.
"Just 1% of Pfizer's supplies have been sold to the international distribution mechanism Covax, as the company has put sales of third and fourth doses in wealthy markets ahead of selling doses to where they're most needed. This will undoubtedly prolong the pandemic.
"Worse, these profits aren't enough for Pfizer: the corporation is determined to prevent anyone else from making its vaccine so it can monopolise this technology for years to come. Right from the start Pfizer has tried to discredit the World Health Organization's attempts to share vaccine know-how. These profits will come at the expense of many many lives around the world."
Global Justice Now is a democratic social justice organisation working as part of a global movement to challenge the powerful and create a more just and equal world. We mobilise people in the UK for change, and act in solidarity with those fighting injustice, particularly in the global south.
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11,000 Children Among Tens of Thousands ‘Waiting for Surgery’ in Cuba Due to US Blockade
Cuba's Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio said he hoped the people of the United States would ask, "Why does our government treat the whole population of Cuba this way?"
Mar 23, 2026
More than 96,000 Cubans, including 11,000 children, are "waiting for surgery" due to a fuel shortage caused by the American blockade, the country's deputy foreign minister, Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, said on Sunday.
The numbers cited by the minister on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday were first reported earlier this month by Cuban Minister of Public Health José Ángel Portal Miranda, who explained that President Donald Trump's policy of “energy asphyxiation," using tariffs to threaten countries out of importing fuel to Cuba, has devastated its National Health Service.
The policy has left Cuba unable to import oil from abroad for more than three months, reducing its fuel supply by about 90% and leading to periodic blackouts and strict energy rationing.
Using the severely limited electricity at its disposal, Cuba's health system has been forced to prioritize continuing cancer treatments and other lifesaving procedures, putting those awaiting non-urgent surgeries on the sidelines.
Last month, a specialist at a hospital in Holguín told Diario de Cuba that the surgeries canceled included "uncomplicated hernias, cataract surgeries, some non-urgent gynecological procedures, and scheduled orthopedic surgeries."
Other healthcare professionals said that nobody was being admitted to the hospital for tests and that it was running low on basic supplies like syringes, IV tubing, and antibiotics, which could not be delivered due to fuel shortages. Most of those that have been used had to be donated by family members or purchased for exorbitant prices on the black market.
Jorge Barrera, a reporter for CBC News, spoke with patients and employees at Havana’s National Institute of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery this weekend and found it to be at about half capacity, and that nonessential care has been virtually all suspended.
"Even though the health system is a point of pride for Cuba... something that they export to the rest of the world," Barrera explained, "because of this crisis, because of the impact it's had on the skyrocketing prices, it's just not enough for them to make ends meet. So people are quitting... to find other ways to make money to feed their families."
Experts with the United Nations have condemned the blockade of Cuba as "a serious violation of international law." Condemnations have grown louder over the past week as Trump said he believed he'd have "the honor of taking Cuba" after it collapsed.
De Cossio said he hoped the people of the United States would ask "Why does our government treat the whole population of Cuba this way?" and that they'd "understand that it's not correct to treat another nation the way the US is doing simply to try to achieve political goals."
The US blockade of Cuba is largely unpopular with the American public. A poll published last week by YouGov found that just 28% of adult US citizens said they approved of the US blocking oil shipments to the country, while 46% said they opposed it.
Asked by anchor Kristen Welker about suggestions from Trump that Cuba would collapse "on its own" without the need for the US to intervene militarily, De Cossio retorted, "What does 'on its own' mean when it’s being forced by the United States?"
Prior to Trump's further measures to isolate Cuba in January, the US had placed Cuba under an economic embargo for more than 60 years, which severely hampered the country's economic development and has cost Cuba trillions of dollars since it began, according to the UN.
"It’s a very bizarre statement, and it’s claimed by most US politicians repeatedly that Cuba will collapse on its own," De Cossio said. "Then why does the US government need to employ so many resources, so much political capital, so many human resources to try to destroy the economy of another country? Evidently, it implies that the country does not have the characteristics to collapse on its own."
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'A Revolting Moral Outrage': Israeli Soldiers Reportedly Torture Gaza Toddler
Reports of 1-year-old Karim Abu Nassar being burned with a cigarette and pierced with a nail followed the publication of a United Nations analysis detailing Israel's "systematic" torture of Palestinians since October 2023.
Mar 23, 2026
Israeli soldiers in Gaza allegedly tortured an 18-month-old Palestinian toddler in an effort to force a confession from his father, local and international media outlets reported Monday.
According to Al Jazeera, Karim Abu Nassar was with his father, Osama Abu Nassar, near the al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza on Saturday when they came under Israel Defense Forces fire. Eyewitnesses told Palestine TV that IDF troops ordered the man to leave the child on the ground and advance to a nearby checkpoint, where he was stripped naked and searched.
Witnesses said IDF soldiers then tortured Karim in front of his father to pressure him to confess to something. Journalist Osama Al-Kahlout interviewed the child's mother, who said the toddler suffered a cigarette burn to one leg and a nail puncture to the other. Al-Kahlout's video shows wounds on the child's legs—injuries reportedly confirmed by an unspecified medical authority.
Karim was reportedly released to relatives via the International Committee of the Red Cross after 10 hours of detention. The ICRC has not issued a statement regarding the matter and rarely does so absent an investigation.
The Palestine Chronicle reported that Osama Abu Nassar remains in custody, in a system rife with torture—sometimes deadly—and other abuse.
The IDF has not commented on the alleged incident.
In the United States, the story is being amplified by prominent figures including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which issued a statement calling the accusations "revolting."
“Israel’s use of a nail and cigarette burns to torture a 1-year-old child and force a confession from his father is a revolting moral outrage that demands immediate action from Congress," the group said. "No child, anywhere in the world, should be subjected to such cruelty, especially with American taxpayer dollars. These actions constitute grave violations of international law and basic human decency."
“Our nation must end its complicity in these crimes," CAIR added. "Congress has a responsibility to ensure that American taxpayer dollars are not used to support the torture or slaughter of more children. Every lawmaker with a conscience must vote to end military aid for the out-of-control Israeli regime.”
The US has given Israel hundreds of billions of inflation-adjusted dollars in aid to Israel since the country was established in 1948, including more than $20 billion since October 2023.
A new report published by UN Palestine expert Francesca Albanese examines the "systematic use by Israel of torture against Palestinians," finding "practices that meet the threshold for genocide" under the Genocide Convention—the basis of the ongoing International Court of Justice (ICJ) case brought by South Africa.
A summary of the report states:
Torture has become integral to the domination of and punishment inflicted on men, women, and children—both through custodial abuse and through a relentless campaign of forced displacement, mass killings, deprivation, and the destruction of all means of life to inflict long-term collective pain and suffering. A continuous, territorially pervasive regime of psychological terror is being imposed, designed to break bodies, deprive a people of their dignity, and force them from their land. This is not incidental violence. It is the architecture of settler-colonialism, built on a foundation of dehumanization and maintained by a policy of cruelty and collective torture.
Palestinian victims—including minors—and witnesses, as well as Israeli soldiers, veterans, and medical professionals have described widespread torture and other abuses including rape and sexual assault by male and female soldiers, electrocution, mauling by dogs, beatings, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, stress positions, and exposure to loud music and temperature extremes.
At least scores of Palestinian detainees have died or been killed in Israeli custody, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton. Many bodies of former Palestinian prisoners returned by Israel have shown signs of torture, execution, and mutilation.
Since the Hamas-led attack of October 2023, Israeli forces have killed or wounded at least 250,000 Palestinians, including more than 65,000 children. Israeli troops have been accused by Palestinians, Western medical volunteers, and their own colleagues of deliberately targeting children with sniper fire and executing them along with their adult relatives during massacres.
In addition to facing the ICJ genocide case, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, where they are wanted for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.
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As TrumpRx Scam Does Virtually Nothing, Big Pharma Jacks Up Prices on Cancer Drugs
"As they continue to hike prices, the pharmaceutical industry is also working overtime to block reforms that would lower them, and patients are paying the price."
Mar 23, 2026
A report released Monday found that Big Pharma has continued raising prices on dozens of cancer drugs, despite President Donald Trump's repeated false claims that he and his administration have slashed drug prices by a mathematically impossible 600%.
The analysis, conducted by Patients for Affordable Drugs, found that pharmaceutical companies increased prices on 64 oncology drugs in the first weeks of 2026, with the vast majority of price hikes coming in above the rate of inflation.
Patients for Affordable Drugs noted the heavy financial toll that paying for treatments takes on US cancer patients, and said the latest price increases would only exacerbate the crisis.
"Cancer drugs are among the most expensive drugs on the market, costing $74,000 more on average than non-cancer drugs," the group explained. "More than 42% of cancer patients in the US fully depleted their savings within two years of diagnosis to cover their care. More than half of Americans with cancer go into debt because of the cost of their care."
Making matters worse, the group added, is that Big Pharma is heavily lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would further delay small molecule drugs, including "widely used, high-cost cancer treatments," from becoming eligible for Medicare price negotiations.
Merith Basey, CEO of Patients for Affordable Drugs, stressed that the latest price increases were unacceptable given that "cancer is a leading cause of death among American seniors, and the treatments patients rely on are already among the most expensive."
"Yet as they continue to hike prices, the pharmaceutical industry is also working overtime to block reforms that would lower them," added Basey, "and patients are paying the price."
While the Patients for Affordable Drugs report focuses on cancer drugs, a December report from Reuters found that at least 350 branded medications are set for price hikes in 2026, including “vaccines against Covid, RSV, and shingles,” as well as the “blockbuster cancer treatment Ibrance.”
The total projected number of drugs seeing price increases in 2026 is significantly higher than in 2025, when 3 Axis Advisors estimated that pharmaceutical companies raised prices on 250 medications. The median price increase for drugs in 2026 is projected at 4%, roughly the same as in 2025.
All of these price increases have come despite Trump's false claims that he has lowered the prices of drugs to the point where pharmaceutical companies would actually be paying patients to take them.
An analysis released last week by the Center for American Progress (CAP) found that the president's TrumpRx initiative, which was created to purportedly offer Americans cheaper prescription drugs, offered genuinely lower prices on "exactly one" of the 54 medications listed on its website.
CAP also found that nearly one-third of the drugs available on the TrumpRx website have generic alternatives that were cheaper than what was being offered, and that the website made no mention of this.
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