Responding to news that Pfizer reported $14 billion in third-quarter revenue for vaccines and is set to earn $36 billion from vaccine sales by the end of the year on the back of the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out, Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International’s Head of Business and Human Rights, said:
“That Pfizer has been able to earn billions of dollars in revenue in the last three months alone, while failing to provide vaccines to billions of people, is a failure of catastrophic proportions. Not only has the vast majority of its vaccines gone to high and upper-middle-income countries but Pfizer has also consistently refused to waive its intellectual property rights and share vaccine technology, while at the same time benefitting from billions of dollars in government funding and advance orders from wealthy countries.
“The apparently unquenchable thirst for profits of big pharmaceutical companies, like Pfizer, is fuelling an unprecedented human rights crisis. If left unchecked, the rights of billions of people around the world to life and to health will continue to be in jeopardy.
“Amnesty International is supporting the World Health Organization’s target of vaccinating 40% of those in low and lower-middle-income countries by the end of 2021 with our 100 Day Countdown campaign. We only have 59 days until the end of the year. That’s 59 days for states to urgently redistribute hundreds of millions of surplus doses that they’re sitting on, and for vaccine developers to ensure that at least half the doses they produce go to these countries.
“It’s not too late for Pfizer and its big pharma competitors to do what’s right for humanity and fulfil their human rights obligations. At the end of the month, WTO members will meet in Geneva to discuss the TRIPS Waiver to temporarily lift intellectual property rights, which could expand the world’s manufacturing capacity of Covid-19 vaccines. Big pharma must stop lobbying against the waiver so that world production can be boosted and diversified, and every person on the planet can get a shot at these life-saving vaccines.”
