Council for Non-Governmental Organisation (CONGOMA) in partnership with Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) and The People’s Vaccine have asked Malawi Government and all governments to engage more Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers in order to increase production of safe and effective covid-19 treatments and other Covid-19 products.
The proposal was made through a joint statement on Friday 11 March when the world was commemorating two years since the World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 a pandemic.
“We call on Government of Malawi and all governments to agree to and implement a global roadmap to deliver the WHO goal of fully vaccinating 70% of people by mid-2022, and beyond this ensure sustained, timely and equitable access worldwide to COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, tests and other medical technologies, including all effective and safe next-generation COVID-19 vaccines and medical technologies,” reads part of the statement.
The organizations have also called for an increase in production of safe and effective vaccines, treatments and other COVID-19 products through suspension of relevant intellectual property rules and ensuring the mandatory pooling of all COVID-19 related knowledge, data and technologies so that any nation can produce or buy sufficient and affordable doses of vaccines, treatments and tests.
According to the organizations, governments should invest public funding now in a rapid and massive increase in vaccine manufacturing, awareness raising to clear myths about the pandemic and the vaccine as well as research and development (R&D) to build a globally distributed network capable of and governed to deliver affordable vaccines as global public goods to all nations.
“(Governments should] make COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests available to governments and institutions at a price as close to the true cost as possible, and provided free of charge to everyone, everywhere, and allocated according to need,” the organizations have said.
They have also asked governments to scale up investment in public health systems to ensure that low and middle-income country governments have adequate resources to get shots into arms and save lives as these investments will pay dividends in the global economy and help restore economic and development gains which the global COVID-19 pandemic has partially reversed.
The World Health Organisation formally declared Covid-19 a global pandemic on 11th March 2020.
