N°10-31/01/2021 The research and production of vaccines to protect populations from the Covid 19 pandemic has given rise to intense research and industrial activity.
Currently, two hundred vaccines are being developed, sometimes at the validation stage with health authorities, and a few are already being used in vaccination campaigns. The speed of their development is a real scientific achievement which highlights the state of advancement of knowledge, the quality of the research and development teams, the industrial capacity to produce them and the massive financial commitment of states to support the companies concerned, because let us not forget that, next to scientific prowess, the anti-Covid vaccine means an opportunity for huge profits for the large pharmaceutical companies. You only need to see the pharmaceutical companies’ stock markets jump with the announcement of positive tests and marketing authorizations!
The World Health Organization (WHO), for its part, stresses the need to protect all populations, whether they belong, according to its terminology, to "rich" or "poor" countries. This desire clashes with mercantile interests and so far, this orientation does not allow us to hope for rapid vaccine protection in the most deprived countries. As with the treatment of the pandemic, social inequalities due to the division of society into classes and / or linked to imperialist domination weigh heavily.
This is the case, for example, of Palestine where discrimination is blatant between the Israeli colonizers and the colonized Palestinians. Thus, the State of Israel, which has validated Pfizer's vaccine and ordered 8 million doses, is launching a major vaccination campaign aimed at the Jewish population including the settlers, while millions of Palestinians de facto living under Israeli control will have to wait much longer. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has no means to meet the financial needs for the implementation of mass vaccination, nor can the hospital system meet the requirements for implementing the Pftizer vaccine requiring a rigorous cold chain logistic. The AP hopes to obtain vaccines through a WHO-led partnership with humanitarian organizations known as COVAX, which aim to provide free vaccines to up to 20% of the population in poor countries, many of whom have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic. But the program only got a fraction of the 2 billion doses it hopes to purchase over the next year. “Rich” countries have already reserved around 9 billion of the 12 billion doses needed according to the pharmaceutical industry.
As we can see, beyond the very real challenges posed by the Covid 19 pandemic and its recent evolution due to the mutation of the virus, the treatment of populations from one country to another and even within states is not not equal. It reflects the inequalities of class and domination in a world marked by the bitter struggles between capitalist monopolies and the imperialist states at their service. The demand for free vaccination available to all throughout the world is our claim in the name of equal rights for all human beings.