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Access Champions News

“Vilomah:” An Essay by Kisha Patterson

Kisha Patterson is a historic preservation architect, artist, and activist practicing in Pittsburgh, PA. She is grateful for the health and safety of her children and urges everyone to demand a People’s Vaccine and sign the Open Covid Pledge. She has been volunteering with Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 since March of 2020.

“Vilomah” is the only word I’ve ever found to mean a mother who has lost her child. On September 22, 2020, Jamain Stephens was buried under a tree on a high spot overlooking the rolling hills of Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 220,000 deaths are so incomprehensible it is easy to become numb to its all, at the same time losing this one young life has been acutely painful to me. Jamain was nearly 21, a football player, healthy, and died from a blood clot he suffered as a complication of Covid-19 in the late summer of 2020. A New York Times article calls into question the safety of contact sports, and the college football team with which he had played and practiced. I don’t care for football, and this may be an argument against the institution entirely – but that isn’t what moved me. He grew up near where I grew up, and his mother is about my age. 

Since the spring lockdowns, I had started running and biking through this old cemetery nearly every day. The first lock-downs of the Covid-19 Pandemic brought a period of fear and isolation, I found solace among the graves.  Green leaves overtook bare trees like they do every spring. Manicured lawns lined with mausoleums and markers in stately rows seemed to imply a natural order to the world, even in death. I slowly realized that I have been crying over the death of this one stranger because I recognized the spot where he was buried.

On the occasions I strolled the winding paths with my children, we would read the headstones. We would say a special prayer for the interred mothers, especially the ones whose graves were dated after her children. It is an old cemetery, some remembered there passed away 175 years ago. I wondered if some of those mothers had any living descendants because they were buried next to two or more of their infant and toddler children. These were the graves of the wealthy, in the late 1800’s clean water and medicine were hardly commonplace, lots of children died quite young.

My 13-year-old son speculated about the headstones dated between 1918 and 1920, wondering how many were victims of the “Spanish Flu”. Like in 2020, an invisible contagion transformed life. I wonder if anyone gathered at homes or graves to try to console mothers having to bury their young adult children? In those times, some cities restricted funerals, and Pittsburgh was one of them. What was it like to grieve alone? In either case, no one could have sequenced the disease’s DNA or peered into the lungs of those infected. Science would not deliver any flu vaccine for another 20 years.

No one has set the grave maker for young Jamain yet, but it will say 2020. One hundred years from now, someone will see all the graves there, from 1840 and on. They will damn, as I do, the lack of sewers and science in the 19th and 20th centuries that resulted in so much suffering, death, and so many inconsolable mothers.

Jamain Stephens went to Central Catholic High School, not even half a mile from the University of Pittsburgh. In 1955, from this University’s Virus Research Laboratory,  Jonas Salk declared his vaccine for polio safe, and effective. More importantly, he wouldn’t patent this find.  He made this compassionate gift to be sure his vaccine would be widely available.

“Could You Patent the Sun?” -Jonas Salk

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News

UAEM Press Release: Moderna Should Free All COVID-19 IP

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

WASHINGTON, DC–October 9, 2020–Moderna announced yesterday, under pressure from civil society groups including Free The Vaccine for COVID-19 and its allies in their calls for a People’s Vaccine, that it will not enforce patent protections on the pending coronavirus vaccine mRNA-1273. While such actions are a step in the right direction, they are without a doubt being made as a result of financial responsibility to US taxpayers, and the global need to contain and eradicate the virus. This is all a requirement for a People’s Vaccine, a growing global movement requiring that when safe and effective vaccine(s) are available they are produced rapidly at scale and made available for all people everywhere, free of charge. 

In August 2020, Free the Vaccine for COVID-19  and its allies held a protest outside of Moderna’s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., to urge the corporation to remove intellectual property rights around their pending coronavirus vaccine which was paid for with US taxpayer dollars, and to commit to signing the OpenCOVID pledge

To date, Moderna has received close to a $1 billion dollars of taxpayer money for COVID vaccine research and development, which doesn’t include the additional $1.5 billion dollars the U.S. government was slated to pay for 300 million vials of the vaccine once it cleared drug trials. Unsurprisingly, big pharma once again was going to rip off the American public and handsomely profit off of the pandemic. 

Despite a corporate press statement from Moderna highlighting the significance of IP rights and its hurdles, “…[we] recognize that intellectual property rights play an important role in encouraging investment in research,” this isn’t enough. Again, the corporation has yet to sign the Open COVID Pledge. The pledge would help prevent coronavirus-related intellectual property rights from being a future barrier to access worldwide.

“Centering patents and profit will only prolong this plague. Moderna must take action now to ensure that their publicly-funded vaccine candidate is sustainably priced and available to all. We cannot defeat this pandemic without global solidarity, and Moderna can play their part by opening up access to their intellectual property and pricing the vaccine sustainably,” says Sernah Essien, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), North America Coordinating Committee Member and a Free The Vaccine Project Manager. 

In addition to urging Moderna to sign the Open COVID Pledge, the Free the Vaccine campaign is calling on the corporation to commit to sharing all rights and knowledge patent to the World Health’s Organization’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) for as long as is necessary to end the pandemic. Any decision to the contrary will lead to further unnecessary deaths and vaccine apartheid where only high income countries have priority access.

“We urgently need a People’s Vaccine: available to everyone, everywhere free of charge” says Merith Basey, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, Executive Director, North America. “Any monopolies on a vaccine will only keep prices artificially high and leaving entire nations at risk of vaccine apartheid. No one will be safe until we are all safe and this will be the most efficient way to end the pandemic as quickly as possible”.

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Free The Vaccine for COVID-19 Campaign is a partnership between Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) and Center for Artistic Activism (C4AA). The global movement in nearly 30 countries with roughly 300 college students, creatives, and medical professionals using digital advocacy and the arts to get universities, pharmaceutical companies, and research entities to sign the Open COVID Pledge, as well as, ensure that COVID-19 vaccine(s) are accessible, sustainably priced, and available to all. The international pledge asks organizations to make their IP free and available to all in the battle against the coronavirus. Currently, Free The Vaccine is in its second round and is at the forefront of the social vaccine action. To learn more, visit us at freethevaccine.org.  

About Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) is a non-profit organization rooted in a movement of university students. UAEM seeks to: 1) Promote access to medicines for people in developing countries by changing norms and practices around university patenting and licensing; 2) Ensure that university medical research meets the needs of the majority of the world’s population; 3) Empower students to respond to the access and innovation crises. Since its founding in 2001, UAEM has grown into an international network of students in medicine, law, public health and related fields with chapters on nearly 100 university campuses in 20 countries. Find out more at http://uaem.org

Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/UAEMpage/

Twitter-https://twitter.com/uaem

Instagram @uaem_meds4people

Media Contact: Joyce-Zoe Farley, Ph.D.

Media & Communications Consultant

201.983.3787 (c)

Communications@essentialmedicine.org

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News

The Future: An Uneven Burden of COVID-19

Image from Suzanne Kreiter via The Boston Globe

First, last week brought news that Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine had reported 90% efficacy. Then, we heard news from another top contender for the vaccine, Moderna, who reported 94.5% efficacy for their vaccine. Finally, Pfizer announced that their COVID-19 vaccine is 95% effective with no safety concerns. These headlines may suggest promising news for individuals in high-income countries like the United States, but what about the rest of the world?

Mike Ludwig from Truthout reports of a “global vaccine apartheid.” Rich countries can distribute the vaccine (after its approval) amongst their populations after engaging in billion-dollar manufacturing deals with pharmaceutical companies, leaving billions of people around the world unable to access the global vaccine supply. This can lead to “economic devastation for vulnerable communities.”

According to Peter Maybarduk, the director of the Access to Medicines program at Public Citizen, these funders have responsibility to the public. They are not responsible for a pharmaceutical company’s profit margins. This is a People’s Vaccine, and we must continue to fight for it.

Read the full article on Truthout here.

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Access Champions News

Aly Bancroft: Pharma’s Billions Sprang from the Taxpayer Dime

Image Credit: Dado Ruvic/Reuters/Washington Post

Megan McArdle was correct that the coronavirus pandemic has revealed the drug development system is working. What she didn’t mention is that the system is working as it was designed: to maximize monopoly profits for the pharmaceutical industry.”

Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) board member and Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 participant Aly Bancroft submitted a Letter to the Editor that was featured in the Washington Post! Aly is also the campaign coordinator at Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program. Read the full letter here.

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Access Champions News

Meet our Participant: Dannie Synder!

Recently, I was given the opportunity to be able to learn more about one of our participants: Dannie Synder. Dannie has been living all over the place since the start of the pandemic, from Austin to Washington D.C. to Mexico City, but has been a dedicated participant of the Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 campaign since Season 1. Read more about her work throughout and beyond the campaign below!

What does the Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 movement mean to you?

I am an artivist: an artistic activist. I consider myself an activist, and I started out in mostly prison abolition. I began as a teacher in juvenile detention centers and through that became interested in the prison abolition movement, particularly because it touches so many different elements from homelessness to mental health to the Black Lives Matter movement — and I’m learning more how it touches access to medicine. This is an area that I have never had much experience and I’m still learning a lot. I’m still gaining confidence in speaking about this movement, and everyday it is shocking to me that access to medicines is an issue. That was one of the reasons I wanted to join this campaign — this is an area that I have been really hesitant to get into as it seems very technical and embedded in the legal system. This campaign is allowing me the opportunity to continue developing my abilities as an artistic activist. 

Given that you mentioned your experience working in prison abolition, have you made any connections with the access to medicines movement?

Well, I’m learning more about mental health issues and with the BLM movement and with everything else that is going on right now, we have to ask these questions like “who do we call when there’s an emergency?” We cannot call the police because it leads to violence, so who can we call and what kind of organizations are available in different cities?

This is really addressing the issues of communities with lack of access to not just physical medicine, but also mental health resources. I’m someone who doesn’t have health insurance, and I’m learning how difficult it is  to get health insurance in America. I did not realize until during this campaign that one in five people can’t afford their medicine and can’t get access to medicine — I am curious to learn more about prisoners in particular those with mental health issues how many of them actually had access to the essential services that they need.

What are you most looking forward to for this season? 

Right now in Season 2, one one of the leaders of our team of our lab is helping come up with really great tactics. One of the things I continue to learn about everyday is we can come up with all these really creative tactics, but what’s actually going to be effective? I really like working with the artistic activism side of this campaign, because we are really good at pushing each other and pushing everyone. I think working also with people from an access to medicines background helps us decide how we are going to get results, since they have experience dealing with the more legal aspects of medicine. 

One thing in particular: I have been super excited about the Jolene vaccine challenge. We made the video the trailer to our music video trailer season 1 and probably by the end of November early December we’re going to make the full-length music video. This is all super exciting for me; I felt very important and I felt very happy that we made something which got so much traction on social media. It was a really nice moment we felt like even though we didn’t get Vanderbilt University on the phone yet (who is our target) you know we still can get a response from them from the video. We felt like we did accomplish something by all the people who were exposed to our video, and learned something important and new about the access to medicines movement. 

What do you think would be a good outcome for this campaign? 

It would be great if we could garner an impressive number of universities to sign onto the Open COVID Pledge. If we could get an institution like [Major State University] to sign the Open COVID Pledge, we know that people like politicians for example are going to pay attention to that. We need to always push universities to do better, and if we can do that, then we have done our part as a campaign!

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News

COVID-19, Generics, and the Medicines Patent Pool

On November 12th, 18 producers of generic medicines joined an effort by the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) in order to expedite access to COVID-19 intellectual property. The MPP is a UN-backed public health organization that accelerates access to essential medicines in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In addition, a generic drug is a drug that works the same way and provides the same clinical benefits as a brand-name drug, but for a lower cost.

In this rare move, a group of pharmaceutical manufacturing companies recently signed onto the MPP’s COVID-19 Open Pledge, promising to “work together via the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) to accelerate access to hundreds of millions of doses of new interventions for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).” Under this pledge, the manufacturing companies are offering their production capacities to helping create billions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines or therapies for LMICs, given that the producers of the therapies allow them to be licensed to these generic manufacturers.

Read more on STAT News here.

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News

Today in the News: The Pfizer Vaccine

Today, global media outlets have been sharing news from the developers of one vaccine candidate, Pfizer and BioNTech. The world has had its eyes on the vaccine, which has already been tested on 43,500 people in six countries with no reported safety concerns, for a few months now.

This week, it was reported that the vaccine offers 90% protection. While this is sufficient to be optimistic, the data reported is not the final analysis. According to BBC, the precise effectiveness of Pfizer’s vaccine can change as more results are analyzed. The vaccine has yet to be approved by the FDA and other agencies, and the information on its safety and efficacy is not final.

With talk about the vaccine spreading through the media today, one may ask themselves: when will I get the vaccine? Pfizer and BioNTech report that they can supply 50 million doses by the end of this year, and 1.3 billion by the end of 2021. Given the fact that each person needs 2 doses for the vaccine to be effective, these numbers could potentially mean 25 million doses in 2020 and 650 million doses by the end of 2021. The vaccine also possesses logistical challenges, such as the need to store it at cold temperatures that require special refrigeration and transport. No plans for vaccine allocation have been finalized on the national level, although it is speculated that healthcare workers and first responders will be the first to receive a vaccine, once approved. Read more from ABC News here.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), noted that there is cause to be optimistic. In an interview with STAT News, Dr. Fauci remarked that all the vaccines developed by major manufactures working with Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. government’s effort to quickly bring a vaccine to market, target the same protein that the Pfizer vaccine does. Thus, other vaccines may roll out positive news in the upcoming months as well! Read the full article on STATS News here.

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News

Gates Foundation and COVID-19: What’s Going On?

A recent report published by Health Policy Watch explored the role of the Gates Foundation, a huge superpower and decision-maker when it comes to the research and development (R&D) of several health technologies, in the COVID-19 pandemic.

While their actions may appear commendable on the surface level, Health Policy Watch explored the ways that the Gates foundation is contributing to trends and actions that have reinforced systemic problems, several of which have been exacerbated by COVID-19.

From a general lack of transparency, to the defense of intellectual property rights, to their relationship(s) with large pharmaceutical companies, the Gates Foundation has been complicit in several problems that have plagued the industry for decades. Read more from Health Policy Watch here.

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Access Champions News

Creative Actions for a People’s Vaccine

This week, our participants at Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 have continued to share their creativity with the world. Keep reading for some highlights from different groups who are working to convince universities around the world to support access to the COVID-19 vaccine!

1. Brittany Herrick took a photo of herself at Dr. Jonas Salk’s grave. Dr. Salk is known for creating the Polio vaccine, which he refused to patent on the grounds that the patent belongs to the people. His refusal to profit from the vaccine saved thousands and thousands of lives. Brittany and her team used Photoshop to send the message that Dr. Salk’s philosophy must be applied to the COVID-19 vaccine as well:

2. Our participants in London have been working hard to contact researchers at Imperial University working on COVID-19 research. To add a personal touch, they made a mask for their mascot which had more information on C-TAP, the COVID-19 technology access pool:

FTV 1

3. One group of participants re-enacted a fictional conversation between COVID-19, a concerned person, a university, Big Pharma, and the Plague Doctor:

Hawks Action

And many more! With the 2020 U.S. general election capturing the attention of hundreds of millions of individuals around the world, we must not forget that our organizing work must continue throughout and beyond this election, regardless of the outcome. We must continue to fight for access to a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine – as our participants have continued to do.

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The Launch & Scale Speedometer

A new effort by the Duke Global Health Innovation Effort strives to map COVID-19 vaccine pre-purchases around the world.

The tool, called the Launch&Scale Speedometer, showed that high-income countries are cultivating deals that leave out low-income countries, hindering efforts for equitable global allocation. The Kaiser Family Foundation reported that based on the report from Duke, high income countries have already purchased 3.8 billion doses of the vaccine, with an option for 5 billion more. People in low-income countries may not be able to access the vaccine until 2024.

At Free the Vaccine for COVID-19, we argue that vaccine nationalism, this process of high-income countries hoarding large supplies of the vaccine, will only prolong the pandemic. Efforts to ensure that the vaccine supply can reach low-income countries are increasingly crucial. The report highlights the importance of global alliances such as COVAX, a WHO effort that would help provide vaccine supplies to a large majority of the world’s population. Make sure to check out more from the tracker here!

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