PMC - Transparency and Accountability Concerns
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High quality. Established institution or organization with editorial oversight and accountability.
Rating inherited from publication venue: PubMed Central
Tangentially relevant to AI safety governance discussions; offers a real-world case study on accountability and transparency failures in publicly-funded, public-interest institutions, which mirrors debates about transparency requirements for AI developers receiving public support.
Metadata
Summary
This 2021 Lancet article examines criticism directed at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) for maintaining secretive grant agreements with COVID-19 vaccine developers despite receiving $1.4 billion in public funding. Legal experts argue that without transparency in contract terms and enforcement mechanisms, neither CEPI nor funded companies can be properly held accountable to public stakeholders. The piece highlights tensions between institutional opacity and public accountability in publicly-funded emergency health initiatives.
Key Points
- •CEPI received $1.4 billion in public development assistance to accelerate COVID-19 vaccine development and ensure equitable access for low-income and middle-income countries.
- •CEPI claims its agreements contain strong provisions on equitable access and sanctions, but critics say it is too secretive about contract conditions.
- •Legal experts argue that secret, individually negotiated agreements prevent meaningful accountability for both CEPI and the vaccine manufacturers it funds.
- •Donors are urged to place stronger transparency requirements on CEPI's grant agreements to enable public oversight.
- •The case illustrates broader challenges in holding publicly-funded international health organizations accountable when operating under non-disclosure norms.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations | Organization | 53.0 |
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CEPI criticised for lack of transparency - PMC
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Lancet . 2021 Jan 21;397(10271):265–266. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00143-4
CEPI criticised for lack of transparency
Ann Danaiya Usher
Ann Danaiya Usher
Find articles by Ann Danaiya Usher
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Copyright and License information
Issue date 2021 23-29 January.
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
PMC Copyright notice
PMCID: PMC7825992 PMID: 33485436
The publicly funded epidemic response agency CEPI has been criticised for the lack of transparency in its grant agreements with COVID-19 vaccine developers. Ann Danaiya Usher reports.
Donors have contributed US$1·4 billion in public money, mainly development assistance, to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to accelerate COVID-19 vaccine research and ensure vaccines are available for low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Over the past year, CEPI has provided grants to ten different vaccine developers, some of which have started receiving regulatory approval f
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