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The time for a People's Vaccine is now
JOHN BACHTELL on how the West is blocking vaccine access in poorer countries
An Indian woman breathes using an oxygen mask as she waits for treatment. India with South Africa began the push to waive patents on Covid treatments last autumn – which is being blocked by Britain and the EU

AS THE Covid-19 pandemic rages and new, more dangerous variants emerge, demands are growing for a “people’s vaccine” to counter the chief obstacle to global vaccination – Big Pharma profiteering.

Public health officials and infectious disease specialists all agree: the pandemic will not end until most of the world is vaccinated. Poor and medium-income countries face a public health catastrophe, but even people living in wealthier countries are not safe. The Delta variant has already led to a “pandemic among the unvaccinated.”

Vaccinating most of the world’s population faces two primary obstacles: right-wing and neo-fascist sabotage and extreme profiteering by a handful of global pharmaceutical companies resulting from their monopolisation and privatisation of the vaccines.

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