VOOZH about

URL: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35535787/

⇱ Competing Responses to Global Inequalities in Access to COVID Vaccines: Vaccine Diplomacy and Vaccine Charity Versus Vaccine Liberty - PubMed


Clipboard, Search History, and several other advanced features are temporarily unavailable.
Skip to main page content
👁 Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

👁 Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation

Add to Collections

Add to My Bibliography

Your saved search

Create a file for external citation management software

Your RSS Feed

Abstract

Global access to coronavirus vaccines has been extraordinarily unequal and remains an ongoing source of global health insecurities from the evolution of viral variants in the bodies of the unvaccinated. There have nevertheless been at least 3 significant alternatives developed to this disastrous bioethical failure. These alternatives are reviewed in this article in the terms of "vaccine diplomacy," "vaccine charity," and "vaccine liberty." Vaccine diplomacy includes the diverse bilateral deliveries of vaccines organized by the geopolitical considerations of countries strategically seeking various kinds of global and regional advantages in international relations. Vaccine charity centrally involves the humanitarian work of the global health agencies and donor governments that have organized the COVAX program as an antidote to unequal access. Despite their many promises, however, both vaccine diplomacy and vaccine charity have failed to deliver the doses needed to overcome the global vaccination gap. Instead, they have unfortunately served to immunize the global vaccine supply system from more radical demands for a "people's vaccine," technological transfer, and compulsory licensing of vaccine intellectual property (IP). These more radical demands represent the third alternative to vaccine access inequalities. As a mix of nongovernmental organization-led and politician-led social justice demands, they are diverse and multifaceted, but together they have been articulated as calls for vaccine liberty. After first describing the realities of vaccine access inequalities, this article compares and contrasts the effectiveness thus far of the 3 alternatives. In doing so, it also provides a critical bioethical framework for reflecting on how the alternatives have come to compete with one another in the context of the vaccine property norms and market structures entrenched in global IP law. The uneven and limited successes of vaccine diplomacy and vaccine charity in delivering vaccines in underserved countries can be reconsidered in this way as compromised successes that not only compete with one another, but that have also worked together to undermine the promise of universal access through vaccine liberty.

Keywords: structural violence; vaccine apartheid; vaccine charity; vaccine diplomacy; vaccine liberty.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

👁 Figure 1.
Figure 1.
COVID-19 vaccine doses administered per 100 people, 27 April 2022 (all doses, including boosters, are counted individually).

References

    1. Petersen E, et al. Emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern Omicron (B.1.1.529)—highlights Africa’s research capabilities, but exposes major knowledge gaps, inequities of vaccine distribution inadequacies in global Covid-19 response and control efforts. Int J Infect Dis 2022; 11:268–72. - PMC - PubMed
    1. WHO . A global pandemic requires a world effort to end it. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/a-global-pandemic-requ.... Accessed 25 February.
    1. Hotez P. Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021.
    1. Lee ST. Vaccine diplomacy: nation branding and China’s COVID-19 soft power play. Place Brand Public Dipl 2021:1–15.
    1. Storeng KT, Puyvallée AB, Stein F. COVAX and the rise of the ‘super public private partnership’ for global health. Glob Public Health 2021. - PubMed
Cite

NCBI Literature Resources

MeSH PMC Bookshelf Disclaimer

The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited.