Covid vaccine ‘bullying’: Experts call out lack of transparency and equity

Despite critics slamming the national department of health (DOH) for accepting and almost concealing the “bullying” by big pharma, the department maintains it entered into agreements to secure Covid vaccines to protect South Africans.

On 17 August, the High Court in Pretoria ruled in favour of nongovernmental organisation (NGO) Health Justice Initiative (HJI), forcing the government to hand over its Covid vaccine contracts with large pharmaceutical organisations.

READ: SA was ‘bullied’ into overpaying for Covid vaccines, Health Justice Initiative reveals

Following their release, the HJI made damning findings on contracts between the DOH and Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, the Serum Institute of India and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisations.

HJI said the conditions of contract negotiations were found to have been unequal and amounted to bullying. SA was charged $10 (about R190) per dose, while the European Union reportedly paid $8.50 a dose.

Health department spokesperson Foster Mohale said the department had been looking at the bigger picture to secure vaccines and “protect the lives of South Africans against the deadly virus which claimed more than 100 000 lives in SA”.

“There is no argument low and middle-income countries, including SA, had limited bargaining power … due to a number of reasons,” he said.

“These included the limited number of manufacturers, vaccine hoarding and nationalism by high and upper-middleincome countries.”

Thokozile Madonko, senior researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, said because of the success of antiretrovirals and generics, SA was “in a good position to argue for equity and justice in the provisioning of Covid vaccines and associated technologies”.

“But one would argue that because of our agreements, especially with the US, we were compromised and in a potentially weaker position,” she said.

“The main issue is transparency, taking the public into your confidence to explain why the contracts were what they were.”

Political commentator Simphiwe Shongwe said although President Cyril Ramaphosa had addressed vaccine inequality with European and African Union members last year, “given the history SA has in terms of corruption, it’s hard to overlook the possibilities”.

“If the department was forthcoming with the contracts and never planned on concealing them, it would be a different story.”

HJI founder Fatima Hassan said all of the contracts proved big pharma was “holding the government to ransom” and charged inflated prices.

“They are one-sided. All the power has remained with the pharmaceutical companies,” Hassan said.

“We believe … our sovereignty was taken away at the behest of powerful pharmaceutical companies who are unelected and hold no public office.”

HJI said the deference and fear of pharmaceutical power in the middle of a crisis in a constitutional democracy “should be of deep concern to the global public health community”.

“It shows how much power was put into the hands of private-sector actors and how few options governments had, acting alone, in the middle of a pandemic,” the HJI said in a statement.

“Unless acted upon with clear, legally binding international agreement, we will arrive at the next pandemic with little more to enforce fair terms than platitudes and scathing press statements from the minister and president in SA and other world leaders in the global south.

“This must be deliberated upon in pandemic-accord negotiations and revisions of the international health regulations currently underway, and at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly.”