Responding to the First Minister’s letter to the Prime Minister where she urged him to support plans to waive intellectual property rules on Covid vaccines and technologies, Jamie Livingstone, Head of Oxfam Scotland, said:
“It’s welcome to see the First Minister standing up for the millions of people around the world who are shamefully being denied access to lifesaving vaccines as a result of corporate greed and secrecy.
“Unless the Prime Minister backs measures to ensure that vaccine recipes and technology are shared globally, the latest anti-Covid measures being implemented across the UK risk being completely undermined, with us all trapped in a never ending hamster wheel of responding to potentially vaccine resistant variants.
“It shouldn’t be up to pharmaceutical company bosses to decide who lives and who dies while their companies pocket billions of dollars. The Prime Minister must end his self-defeating opposition to the global action that’s needed to break up their monopoly control over vaccine supply. In doing so, he can send an unequivocal message: that access to a life-saving vaccine shouldn’t depend on where you live or how much money you have in your pocket.”
/ENDS
For more information and interviews, please contact: Rebecca Lozza, Oxfam Media and Communications Adviser, Scotland and Wales: rlozza1@oxfam.org.uk / 07917738450