THE government’s global vaccination obstruction is an assault on the NHS’s founding principles, vaccine equity campaigners said today.

On the 73rd anniversary of the health service’s establishment, Global Justice Now accused the government of “rejecting the values that make our NHS great” by obstructing efforts to vaccinate the world.

Rich countries such as Britain are hoarding vaccine supplies and holding on to jab patents, leaving poorer countries without access.

This “vaccine apartheid” is not only immoral but also risks prolonging the pandemic, the social justice organisation says.

Director Nick Dearden said: “The government is blocking global efforts to waive intellectual property rules on Covid-19 vaccines that would allow low and middle-income countries to produce their own C-19 vaccines.

“It’s a move that would unlock the world’s unused capacity to produce C-19 vaccines, rapidly vaccinating the world and ending this pandemic.

“Allowing the virus to spread in these countries will lead to new variants that could derail the UK’s vaccination programme, sending us back to square one.

“That would be an assault on the NHS’s founding principles of comprehensive universal healthcare and an insult to staff who have got us through this pandemic.”

The warning came after the United States and France joined more than 130 countries supporting an intellectual-property waiver on C-19 vaccines.

The move was first proposed by India and South Africa, just two of many countries in the global south struggling with infections, to the World Health Organisation (WHO) more than eight months ago.

More than 27,000 people have signed a Global Justice Now petition calling on all governments, members of the WHO and pharmaceutical companies to urgently lift the patents on vaccines and to share the technological knowledge so that the whole world can get vaccinated at an affordable cost.