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People's Medicines - Embedding Equitable Access
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This resource is tangentially relevant to AI safety; it addresses governance and equitable access in global health R&D rather than AI systems, but may offer analogous lessons for AI governance and equitable deployment of advanced technologies.
Metadata
Importance: 18/100organizational reportanalysis
Summary
This report from People's Medicines critiques the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) for failing to embed meaningful equitable access provisions in its vaccine R&D funding mechanisms. It argues that CEPI's access policies and governance structures are inadequate to ensure that vaccines developed with public funding reach populations in low- and middle-income countries during health emergencies. The authors propose concrete reforms to CEPI's policy framework and governance to better serve global health equity.
Key Points
- •CEPI's current access policies lack binding commitments to ensure affordable and timely vaccine access for low- and middle-income countries.
- •Public funding of vaccine R&D through CEPI is not sufficiently tied to equitable access conditions or transparent pricing obligations.
- •Governance structures at CEPI are criticized for insufficient representation of affected communities and LMICs in decision-making.
- •The report recommends overhauling CEPI's access framework to include enforceable conditions on pricing, supply, and technology transfer.
- •Lessons from COVID-19 vaccine inequity underscore the urgency of reforming pandemic preparedness institutions before the next emergency.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations | Organization | 53.0 |
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Embedding equitable access in vaccine R&D:
Why CEPI’s access policy and governance need an overhaul
Manuel Martin*1
Summary
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) has become a key actor in the
research and development (R&D) of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases and has
played a significant role in the COVID-19 pandemic. But CEPI’s equitable access policy is
wholly inadequate and certainly not fit for purpose to overcome the political and market
forces responsible for today’s extreme and shameful vaccine inequality. As the world enters
the third year of this pandemic, and with CEPI poised to replenish its budget, adapt its
strategy, and increase its scope, it is vital that CEPI’s access policy and governance be
urgently overhauled, and that CEPI commits to a more ambitious diversification of both R&D
and manufacturing that prioritises low- and middle-income countries. The People’s Vaccine
Alliance calls on existing and potential supporters of CEPI to ensure their funding is
conditional on achieving this step change.
Introduction: The state of play
As the world enters the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, profound global vaccine
inequity continues unabated. High-Income Countries (HICs) have managed to administer
vaccine boosters to 40% of their population while low- and lower-middle-income countries
have only been able to give doses one and two to just 6% and 46% of their population,
respectively. Pharmaceutical monopolies have artificially limited supplies, kept prices of
several vaccines out of reach for LMICs, and inequitably distributed vaccines. Hasty
donations of doses near-expiry by HICs have led to wasted vaccines and significant
absorption issues in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) 1. LMICs are increasingly
disillusioned by the failure of existing global health institutions, to remedy persistent
inequities created by pharma monopolies and HICs hoarding. LMICs have demanded not just
access to vaccine doses but also the knowledge and intellectual property necessary to
produce their own vaccines.
In the meantime, COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers continue to make record breaking
profits. Vaccines, a pharmaceutical intervention previously neglected by the private sector
due to perceived limited profit potential, now represent the pharmaceutical products with
1 Manuel Martin is an independent consultant for the People’s Vaccine Alliance
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the highest annual sales in history – a dynamic which has fuelled pharmaceutical
corporations’ opposition to equitable access, sharing of know-how and waiving intellectual
property (IP).
Global health institutions, chief among them COVAX, continue to struggle to assert
themselves over narrow political and commercial interests. The Coalition for Epidemic
Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) has established itself as a key actor in both the research
and development (R&D) of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases and played an
outsized role in the COVID-19 pa
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