Covid vaccine contracts hold SA to ransom
Activists accuse big pharma of using pandemic to bully SA
Health activists have accused pharmaceutical manufacturers of holding the SA government to ransom over Covid-19 vaccine contracts, forcing it to pay a premium on the millions of doses it procured at the height of the pandemic while shielding themselves from potential lawsuits and penalties for late deliveries.
SA’s previously secret Covid-19 vaccine deals were released on Tuesday by the Health Justice Initiative (HJI) following a high court ruling in August ordering the department of health to provide the advocacy group with the contracts it signed with pharmaceutical manufacturers Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and the Serum Institute of India (SII), and the international vaccine sharing mechanism Covax...
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