Four-day Summit for vaccine internationalism by Progressive International was opened on June 18, 2021.
Highlights
- Summit was opened with the goal of ending “covid-19 pandemic as quickly as possible by administering and securing COVID-19 vaccines for all”.
- Vaccine summit brings together political leaders, Global south governments, healthcare workers and vaccine manufacturers from about twenty countries and follows criticism of G7’s plan.
- Recently, U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock had criticised G-7 plan as not serious and lacking necessary urgency.
Agenda of the summit
- Participants of the summit seek to boost up production, distribution and delivery of the vaccines across world as presently, only 6.2% of the world population is fully vaccinated against COVID.
- Summit hope to consider concrete proposals to bring technology, invoke patent waivers and invest in rapid production of vaccines.
- Representatives from governments of Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, Cuba, Venezuela Kerala (India) and Kisumu (kenya) will be joined by four vaccine manufacturers namely, Fiocruz (Brazilian manufacturer), Virchow Laboratories (Indian manufacturer), Biolyse (Canadian firm) and BioFarma Cuba (Cuba manufacturer)
Background
This summit is being organised in the backdrop of fears on vaccine nationalism, where developed economies were benefiting due to production of home-grown vaccine while, poor countries were not getting access to vaccine which was prolonging the covid-19 pandemic.