When pharma giants failed humanity

ACCORDING to World Health Organisation Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Covid-19 pandemic that is ravaging human lives the world over has exposed the “moral failure” of humans.

As the world’s 7.9 billion people pin their desperate hopes in fasttrack life-saving vaccines, the pharmaceutical giants have failed humanity.

The 1.25 billion doses of vaccine worldwide were largely distributed in 49 high-income countries. And a mere 0.3% of the vaccines were given out to the world’s 25 poorest countries. Indeed, Tedros is right in calling this a “moral failure”.

In a world where corporate social responsibility is a celebrated credo, how could pharma giants fail humanity? Is this not a crime against humanity? Is this not the mother of all greed? Is this not wilful discrimination against humanity?

With hardly a handful of nations having pharmaceutical giants capable of and owning the sole rights to manufacture the much-touted vaccines that now may become a passport for freedom and right to travel, we see money (affordability) being the qualifier to saving lives. Where is the moral compass of all stakeholders? Whatever happened to the powerful world bodies and celebrated world leaders’ ability to guide the capitalist or communist or socialist world to serve humanity in a global crisis that is battering healthcare systems, economies and social order, as we keep counting dead bodies?

Money and profits determine who lives and who perishes. Should we not take to task these pharmaceutical manufacturers for profiting from this scale of a disaster? If we have failed the least of the nations, we have failed all of humanity.

The Covid-19 disaster has revealed how power, capability and knowledge is being abused to the hilt and celebrated without shame.