AIDS Healthcare Foundation  applauds the European Union (EU), South Africa, India and the US for reaching a compromise on waiving intellectual property protection on COVID -19 vaccines, according to POLITICO . AHF urges all EU countries and World Trade Organization member states to immediately ratify and implement the proposal to accelerate global access to vaccines.

“While this compromise is woefully late, as South Africa and India proposed an intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines in October 2020, we welcome the decision as a step in the right direction for the expansion of vaccines to countries with low- and middle-income families who are still severely deprived of access,” said Michael Weinstein, president of the AHF. “The world has been waiting for there to finally be some progress on vaccine justice at WHO. Now that the EU and US have agreed to get things started, we are urging all EU countries and other WHO member states to follow suit.”

The first COVID-19 vaccine was made available in December 2020. Since then, due to vaccine hoarding by rich countries and the refusal of vaccine manufacturers to share knowledge and technology, most low- and middle-income countries have been waiting for sufficient doses to vaccinate their populations. Currently, only 14% of people in low-income countries worldwide have received even one dose, and barely 14% of people in the African continent have been fully vaccinated.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to more than 1.6 million clients in 45 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, Asia- Pacific region and Europe. To learn more about AHF, visit our website at www.aidshealth.org , or find us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on Twitter: @aidshealthcare and Instagram: @ AIDShealthcare

This announcement is officially valid in the original source language. Translations are only intended as a reading aid and should be compared with the text in the source language, which is the only legally valid one.

Contacts
US MEDIA CONTACT:
Ged Kenslea ,

Senior Director of Communications, AHF
+1.323.308.1833 employment +1.323.791.5526 mobile
gedk@aidshealth.org

Denys Nazarov ,

Director of Global Policy and Communications, AHF
+1 323.308.1829
denys.nazarov@ahf.org

 

Source:businesswire.com

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