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The Progressive

NewsWire

A project of Common Dreams

For Immediate Release
Contact:

Joe Karp-Sawey, media manager
Tel: +44 (0)7711 875 345
Email:
joe.karpsawey@globaljustice.org.uk

AstraZeneca Profit-Pricing Shows "Utter Folly" of Handing Over Patent for Oxford Vaccine External

Reacting to news that AstraZeneca will begin charging a for-profit price for its publicly-funded vaccine, Nick Dearden, Director of Global Justice Now, said:

"AstraZeneca's decision to start profiting from Oxford University's coronavirus vaccine mid-pandemic shows the utter folly of giving away publicly-funded science to big pharma.

LONDON

Reacting to news that AstraZeneca will begin charging a for-profit price for its publicly-funded vaccine, Nick Dearden, Director of Global Justice Now, said:

"AstraZeneca's decision to start profiting from Oxford University's coronavirus vaccine mid-pandemic shows the utter folly of giving away publicly-funded science to big pharma.

"The non-profit pledge was never a gift to the world from a benevolent company. It was the most Oxford could get from a manufacturer playing hardball during a global health emergency. And AstraZeneca has still refused to share the vaccine recipe with the WHO, which would allow poorer countries to manufacture it for themselves.

"This moment was always going to come - and it's exactly why public health experts have demanded a waiver of intellectual property on Covid-19 vaccines. Corporations will always put profits first if you give them control over who lives and who dies.

"In the future, public funding for the development of essential medicines must be conditional on global access. And we need global public manufacturing capacity to ensure this never happens again."

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.

020 7820 4900