UTSC Global & International Health Week-by IDSC11
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation*-Global Saviour or Guardian of Corporate Interests?
*This website has no affiliation with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This is a project for UTSC IDSC11, 2021.
Guardian of Corporate Interests?
1
Pharmaceutical companies and profits during the pandemic
Research universities and pharmaceutical companies have made humanitarian pledges to ensure vaccine access during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, Oxford University promised to donate their rights to their vaccine to any drug manufacturer.
However, under pressure from the Gates Foundation, Oxford reneged on this promise and granted exclusive rights to AstraZeneca, with no guarantee to minimize price. Like other Big Pharma, AstraZeneca benefited from huge public research grants, while able to maintain secrecy about patents and sales deals. [1]
Countries including South Africa and India, have called on the World Trade Organization to suspend intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines and therapies. Many public health officials have also urged vaccine makers to share their technology and data to maximize the global production of vaccines. Yet, no pharma company has done so thus far. [2]
2
Guardian of pharma companies' intellectual property rights
The Gates Foundation, by rejecting open access to the intellectual property of vaccines in this pandemic, is protecting the profits of these private pharmaceutical companies. These intellectual property rights give Big Pharma sole control over vaccine production and access. [3] Moreover, major philanthropies, including the BMGF and the Wellcome Trust, simultaneously support pharma research through their donations to PPPs such as CEPI and are poised to benefit financially from these investments, revealing troubling conflicts of interest. [4]
This patent system traps countries into a system that prioritizes Pharma profits and puts the lowest income countries at the back of the lines for obtaining vaccines. As high-income countries make direct deals with manufacturers and hoard vaccines, the rest of the world will have to wait longer for access, potentially stretching the pandemic. [5]
COVAX was established with Gates Foundation support, to ensure the allocation of vaccines to LMICs. However, about 16% of the world's population is currently monopolizing more than half of the available COVID-19 vaccines. [6]
3
Narrowing the global health agenda
In addition to favoring private sector involvement in global health, the Gates Foundation follows a technically oriented approach to global health. Its model emphasizes short-term achievements as opposed to long term investments in health
Gates funding has also heavily shaped research and development priorities, with inadequate attention to health care systems in LMICs. The BMGF is also one of the largest donors to the World Health Organization, bringing enormous influence over this intergovernmental organization. Ultimately, the BMGF ignores the structural causes of ill health and weak health systems, as well as sanitation, housing, and economic redistribution.
The Foundation has also been greatly criticized by public interest civil society organizations for wielding tremendous power over public policy agenda-setting without any democratic accountability
So are Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation the villains in this pandemic?
The Foundation would not be so powerful if other sectors and players were doing what they are supposed to do. That includes...
1
An independent WHO fully funded through member country dues and devoid of private funding.
2
A WTO that abides by the rules established through the Doha Declaration, which allows for patent rules to be waived during public health emergencies
3
A fair system of global trade and finance that does not privilege private players, especially from powerful countries.
What is to be done?
In that sense, governments and multilateral organizations ought to step up and make the right and just decisions for the people they represent. For example, governments can regulate and demand transparency and low prices from pharma companies, and promote global scientific cooperation. More importantly, public health should be considered a public good; we should never be dependent on private actors to make our decisions. If the system is healthy, public-interest civil society actors should a strong say in ensuring health care equity and access through holding governments accountable. If these principles and practices are heeded, there may be no need or place for global health philanthropies.
What more can be done in the future?
Even Melinda Gates admits...
The New York Times, 2020
"There is a healthy ecosystem that needs to exist between government, philanthropy, the private sector and civil society. And when you get that ecosystem working at its best, no one party in that ecosystem has too much power."
— Melinda Gates, Co-founder of BMGF