In response to the debilitating health and social crises brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, the People’s Vaccine Alliance-Asia (PVA Asia) instigated a broad and sustained campaign for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments, and a more resilient universal healthcare systems in the region. Two years into this campaign, we have promoted the necessary transformations in public opinion, public health policy, and discourse on trade policy, and have built a strong civil society support to address inequality in accessing COVID-19 related services, as well as exposing and challenging corporate greed.
As PVA Asia, we formed a regional coalition of 60 civil society organisations to mobilise and campaign in 17 countries: South Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka; South-East and East Asia: Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam; Middle East: Palestine.
Our calls are clear: we demand that governments must prioritise public health investment and provide free and safe vaccines for all. We call on countries to remove barriers on technology transfer of vaccine science and for a waiver on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) regulation covering vaccine technology. We demand that governments should ensure a fair and equitable distribution of vaccines while also prioritising vulnerable and discriminated communities. We denounce the pharmaceutical companies’ greed in profiteering from the production of vaccines. We also call on the WHO and UN agencies to provide technical support to ASIAN countries for a quick and safe rollout of vaccine programmes.
This is the story of our journey from 2020 to 2023.