Our friends at Public Citizen have drafted this petition, demanding immediate action from world leaders to end vaccine apartheid. We encourage you to sign your name to the petition to President Biden.
Demanding Immediate Action from the Biden Administration to End Vaccine Apartheid
Dear President Biden,
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused massive loss worldwide, but the harms have not been equally distributed. While the US and other wealthy countries surpass a 50% vaccination rate, only 1% of people in low-income countries have received even one dose of the vaccine. As WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said, “We are in the race of our lives, but it’s not a fair race, and most countries have barely left the starting line.”
Civil society organizations, athletes, and supporters of our #StopPlayingGames campaign are using the power of sport to advocate for universal vaccine access. The Tokyo 2021 Olympics are a symbol of global solidarity and friendly competition. President Biden, you must take this opportunity to Stop Playing Games, start saving lives, and vaccinate the world now.
We are grateful for your commitment to making the United States “the world’s arsenal of vaccines.” The donation of 500 million doses is welcome, but it is not nearly enough. COVAX and other vaccine donation efforts have failed to vaccinate even healthcare workers and vulnerable groups in low-income countries. The world urgently needs not only redistribution of wealthy countries’ dose stockpiles, but also increased vaccine production capacity.
We are calling on the US government to:
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Launch and invest in a democratized, public, global vaccine manufacturing program. A total investment of less than $25 billion, including whole-of-government efforts to source raw materials and provide technical assistance, can produce 8 billion doses of mRNA vaccine within one year, enough for more than half the world’s population.
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Share the publicly funded NIH-Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine recipes with vaccine producers and regional manufacturing hubs worldwide, so that manufacturers around the world can produce vaccines at scale. The American public supports bold action to vaccinate the world.
The world needs vaccine justice, not patronizing and inadequate vaccine donations. Under current estimates, people in low-income countries could be forced to wait years for their shots. This is unacceptable, unjust, and unsafe. True Olympic solidarity means ensuring rapid access to vaccines for everyone, everywhere.
Ending the pandemic requires urgent, coordinated action from global leaders. President Biden, your leadership is vital in ensuring that all countries have access to the doses, technology, and manufacturing capacity that they need to make vaccines for their citizens. We demand swift, equitable, and democratized manufacturing and distribution of vaccines. This is the only way to save billions of lives and begin the global economic recovery.
