Everything You Wanted To Know About Non-Western Covid Vaccines (But Were Afraid To Ask)

Achal Prabhala

Coordinator

AccessIBSA Project

Friday, 21 May 2021

06:30 PM IST | 02:00 PM BST | 09:00 AM EDT | 03:00 PM CET

The entire world faces a shortage of coronavirus vaccines, even though it is to different degrees. Rich countries aren’t getting enough, and many poor countries aren’t getting any vaccines at all. As we clamour for concessions for western pharmaceutical companies—to license their monopolies on intellectual property and know-how—we may have a solution hiding in plain sight: vaccines from China and Russia, as well as from India, and a host of other countries including Thailand, Vietnam and Cuba. Vaccines from these countries are available in large quantities, and in some cases, with their technology free to be used by anyone interested. The problem? Overcoming the credibility gap they face, a gap that organisations like the WHO are not equipped to fix, and to the contrary, are designed to exacerbate.

This talk asks whether, and how, we can move the centre of pharmaceutical innovation beyond a handful of western countries in order to achieve better outcomes for the entire world, including the west itself.

About the Expert

Achal Prabhala is a public health activist, the coordinator of the AccessIBSA Project (www.accessibsa.org) and a fellow of the Shuttleworth Foundation. He is a writer, researcher, and thoughtful and strategic advocate for intellectual property reform and access to medicines.

His fellowship idea was AccessIBSA, a tri-continental project set up to expand access and speed up the discovery of new drugs in the developing world, specifically India, Brazil and South Africa. He has worked to drive change in the legal and policy frameworks that have underpinned the development and manufacture of medicines for decades.

CONTAGION’S PUBLIC LECTURE AND TUTORIAL SERIES:

As a part of our public programming, we will invite experts and early-career researchers from various disciplines such as epidemiology, infectious diseases research, and history, among others. They will talk about cutting-edge research, historical responses to contagion, and pressing issues in today’s world, to give the audience insights into how contagion is studied, mapped, and understood in a host of ways. The lectures will be followed by tutorials for a small group of young adults, who will have the chance to interact closely with the expert on their field of expertise.

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