Global justice and the COVID-19 vaccine: Limitations of the public goods framework

Abstract

As vaccines for COVID-19 were first being approved for use, there were widespread calls for it to be assigned a 'global public good'. However, allocating the COVID-19 vaccine globally poses a novel challenge of redistribution, one that cannot be effectively undertaken using current mechanisms for the dispensation of aid. An examination of the origins and implicit logic of global public goods theory shows that it would not be effective as a framework in this context. I argue that while it is a useful rhetorical tool to underscore the need for global access, it fails to account for concerns arising out of structural inequities between countries in the Global South and North. In addition to being illdefined, the phrase encodes a neoliberal logicone that prioritises the protection of private capital over democratic claims of redistribution and social justice. To ensure global access, our attention must be focussed instead on explicitly accounting for inequities, securing access for countries in the Global South and addressing the norm-setting powers of pharmaceutical companies.

Global access to COVID-19 vaccines: a scoping review of factors that may influence equitable access for low and middle-income countries

“…This affects the total quantity of vaccines produced, which, in the case of influenza vaccines, has affected LMICs as it has been perceived that there is ‘lower demand’ in these markets. 35 50 During this recent pandemic, substantial public funding, which has historically been targeted more towards early- stage development, has also been invested in the late-stage development of multiple COVID-19 vaccines contributing to global market distortions. 32 36 37 55 …”

Reimagining Health as a ‘Flow on Effect’ of Biomedical Innovation: Research Policy as a Site of State Activism

“…Certain departures between prominent strands of neoliberal theory and the features of neoliberal restructuring projects have been widely observed. Recent critical scholarship has highlighted the ways in which neoliberalism was never simply a laissez faire project; rather, its promoters sought to create institutions that protect markets and private capital against democratic interventions (Slobodian 2018 ; Saksena 2021 ). Instead of the retreat of the state, late-modern, capitalist states’ expenditure as a proportion of GDP has grown in recent decades (Cahill 2010 )—albeit with a reallocation of their resources (Ryan 2015 ).…”

“…Similarly, we observe that state activism to assetize (Birch 2017 ) publicly funded health and medical knowledge production and to subsidise research commercialisation activities—as we investigate here—is entirely in keeping with the market-creating, pro-corporate agendas of actually existing neoliberalism. That is, the MRFF is itself a vehicle for neoliberalisation, while conceptions of the ‘public good’ embodied in it are in many respects hostile to social democratic values (on the amenability of this concept to neoliberal logics more broadly, see Saksena 2021 ). Further, we show that recognising this state activism is essential to understand the complexity of the epistemic transformation produced by the MRFF.…”

Politics and pandemics

“…It examines the ways in which both elite and public framing about medicine pricing informs the social construction of markets, creating hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses in relation to the existing pharmaceutical system with its current emphasis on private profit rather than public health needs. Finally, the last article in this section, Sakena's 'Global justice and the COVID-19 vaccine: Limitations of the public goods framework' (Saksena, 2021), examines the challenges of developing and allocating COVID-19 vaccines. It analyses the limitations of global public goods discourse, which has been employed as a rhetorical tool to emphasise the need for global access, but that fails to adequately address the structural inequalities that exist between the countries of the Global South and the Global North.…”