vaccines

Responding to the EU’s proposed reform of pharmaceutical regulations, Piotr Kolczyński, EU Health Policy Advisor at Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said: "Reducing the exclusivity of data is a step towards improving access to medicines within Europe, but it is total hypocrisy for the EU to protect the right to health in their own borders while undermining it elsewhere. 

Rich countries have secured almost three times as many courses of a World Health Organisation (WHO)-recommended COVID-19 medicine, Pfizer’s Paxlovid, according to new analysis from Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance.

Max Lawson, Oxfam International's Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam, said: "The G7 had failed the Global South here in Hiroshima.  They failed to cancel debts, and they failed to find what is really required to end the huge increase in hunger worldwide. They can find untold billions to fight the war but can’t even provide half of what is needed by the UN for the most critical humanitarian crises."

Less than half (49 per cent) of the 2.1 billion COVID vaccine donations promised to poorer countries by G7 countries have been delivered, according to new figures published today by Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance.  

For every new billionaire created during the pandemic — one every 30 hours — nearly a million people could be pushed into extreme poverty in 2022 at nearly the same rate, reveals a new Oxfam brief today. “Profiting from Pain” is published as the World Economic Forum — the exclusive get-together of the global elite in Davos — takes place for the first time face-to-face since COVID-19, a period during which billionaires have enjoyed a huge boost to their fortunes. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the extreme inequality in Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries and pushed millions into poverty, reveals a new analysis from Oxfam, Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) and Development Finance International (DFI).

In separate virtual addresses to the shareholders of Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Oxfam called on the pharmaceutical corporations to improve COVID-19 vaccine equity and access so that everyone, everywhere has access to these life-saving shots. 

Over a quarter of a billion more people could crash into extreme levels of poverty in 2022 because of COVID-19, rising global inequality and the shock of food price rises supercharged by the war in Ukraine, reveals a new Oxfam brief today. 

In response to reports of a potential compromise agreed by the EU, South Africa, India and the US for a waiver of intellectual property rules for COVID vaccines, Max Lawson, Head of Inequality Policy for Oxfam and co-chair of the People's Vaccine Alliance, said: 
 

The COVID-19 death toll has been four times higher in lower-income countries than in rich ones, according to a new report published today by Oxfam on behalf of the People’s Vaccine Alliance as the world marks two years since the World Health Organization declared the pandemic.