The Diplomat
Ciudadanos Parliamentary Group submitted a non-legislative proposal requesting the Government to report on the impact of vaccines and resources donated by Spain to COVAX and calling for this mechanism to be maintained “beyond COVID-19” and contribute to equitable access to vaccines against other infectious diseases.
“The Global Access Fund for COVID-19 Vaccines (COVAX) is one of the fundamental pillars of the vaccine distribution system to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of severe clinical cases of the COVID-19 disease worldwide”, states the proposal, presented last October 11 for debate in the Commission on International Cooperation for Development of the Congress of Deputies.
According to Ciudadanos, COVAX was born “as the opportunity for those developing countries to access vaccines against COVID-19 without resorting to counterproductive measures that have been put on the table by those who have no respect for fundamental rights and freedoms, such as expropriations or suspensions of intellectual property rights”. Therefore, the motion continues, COVAX is “the best option for combining the freedom of companies to innovate and develop new solutions that respond to the problems infectious diseases pose to global public health while ensuring that the entire world population does not face insurmountable socioeconomic barriers to accessing these solutions.”
“Despite the success of this initiative, COVAX is, for now, a mechanism created ad hoc for the global COVID-19 pandemic, and therefore has no aspiration of permanence,” it continues. “However, problems in equitable access to vaccines are not characteristic of COVID-19, but affect all infectious diseases that claim the lives of millions of people every year around the world, especially in developing countries,” it adds. “For example, malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS remain among the ten leading causes of death in the developing world” and the example of the first vaccine against malaria, recently approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) and whose “main challenge is to develop this vaccine on a massive scale and, especially, to get it to where it is most needed”, reveals that “the problem that COVAX came to solve is far from being left behind”.
Therefore, the motion urges the Government to “defend, within the United Nations, the need for the COVAX mechanism to be maintained beyond the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure equitable access to vaccines for all types of infectious diseases by the population of less developed countries”. It also asks the Executive to increase the Spanish contribution to the COVAX mechanism, “both in terms of funding committed so that it can develop its storage and distribution functions and in terms of doses donated by our country”, and proposes the preparation of “a report of results detailing the impact generated by the resources and vaccines donated by Spain to the COVAX mechanism during the years 2020 and 2021, to be presented to the Parliament in the first three months of next year 2022”.
