From the Editorial Office
La Jornada newspaper
Tuesday, November 30, 2021, p. 4
Two and a half million nurses from 28 countries requested a United Nations (UN) investigation into human rights violations committed by the European Union, Great Britain, Switzerland, Norway and Singapore by blocking the exemption of patents from vaccines, as new strains proliferate.
Blocking Patent Waiver it is a clear violation of the right to health of nurses, caregivers and patients. So now we are going to take them to court. We demand an urgent investigation into the obstruction of these Covid-19 criminals
, sentence the letter.
Since the end of 2020, countries like India and South Africa have asked the World Trade Organization to lift registrations, which would allow a vaccine formula to be available for manufacturers to produce locally. The European Union, Norway, Great Britain, Singapore and Switzerland blocked the request.
Health personnel have witnessed first-hand the staggering death toll and immense suffering caused by political inaction
, noted the nursing unions of 28 countries.
At least 115,000 members of the medical and health personnel around the world have died as a result of Covid-19 and although 40 percent on average have been fully vaccinated, in Africa and the western Pacific the figure is less than 10 percent.
The refusal of some countries to compromise on the rules on the intellectual property rights of immunizations contributed to a “apartheid of vaccines, ”in which the wealthiest nations secured at least 7 billion doses, while low-income nations have around 300 million.
Such a distribution is not only extremely unfair
, argued the nurses, but the rampant transmission of Covid-19 in developing countries also increases the risk of new variants, such as omicron, appearing.
As frontline workers, we are in a good position to testify against the violation of everyone’s right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health due to the impact of a delayed waiver of temporarily waiving vaccine patents.
, they indicate in the letter.
Instead of supporting this exemption, certain governments are protecting the profits of Big Pharma at the expense of public health.
, they deplore.
The letter, addressed to Tlaleng Mofokeng, a South African doctor and UN Special Rapporteur on physical and mental health, can be read in full here: https://tinyurl.com/28bn483v .
