We need a People's Vaccine: a patent-free, mass-produced vaccine that is distributed fairly and made available free of charge, to every individual, rich and poor alike, in every country. Sandra Stowe / Oxfam America
David, the People’s Vaccine Alliance is growing, thanks to you.
More than 57,000 Oxfam supporters like you joined two million others from around the world in directly calling for President Biden to support a People’s Vaccine: a patent-free, mass-produced vaccine that is distributed fairly and made available free of charge, to every individual, rich and poor alike, in every country.
And last month, he listened. On May 5th President Biden agreed to support a waiver of intellectual property rules at the World Trade Organization, a critical first decision toward boosting production and availability globally. Amid a global upsurge in cases, President Biden’s decision to open the vaccine recipe is a major – and essential – step forward. A step that is only possible because we made our voices heard.
“This is a testament to the widespread public movement calling for an end to vaccine monopolies,” said Oxfam America President Abby Maxman.
David – thanks to the support of the Oxfam community, we are one step closer to putting a permanent, decisive end to a pandemic that has left no part of the world untouched. Together, we’re also continuing our efforts to respond to the COVID-19 crisis globally and to fight poverty and injustice.
As concerns about global variants of COVID-19 emerge around the world, more and more people and their elected representatives are calling for governments and pharmaceutical companies to temporarily waive intellectual property rules for vaccines and share technology to increase vaccine production. If nothing changes, 9 out of 10 people in poor countries won’t even have access to a vaccine this year.
Countries such as India – where COVID-19 is spreading rapidly and overwhelming hospitals. Despite their role as one of the main global producers of pharmaceuticals, very few of India’s 1.39 billion population have access to COVID-19 vaccine. “India is the pharmacy of the world, but it has been gasping for breath, choked by big pharmaceutical corporation monopolies.” says Oxfam India Executive Director Amitabh Behar.
The recent announcement by the Biden Administration – supported by many Congressional leaders, world leaders and Nobel laureates – is a breakthrough for people in India and other countries that still lack widespread access to vaccinations. But Behar says there is still more work to be done. “We need every rich country still blocking a waiver on intellectual property rules to join President Biden and offer hope for India and many other countries that we are indeed not being left behind.”
David, thanks to dedicated supporters like you, Oxfam is working to ensure that everyone has access to protection from this virus. Your commitment allows us to continue our push for a People’s Vaccine while maintaining our ongoing efforts to overcome hunger, poverty, and injustice worldwide.
On Monday, I joined dozens of advocates, legislators, and other medical professionals at the Joint Committee on Public Health to testify in support of three of the Advocacy Fund’s priority bills: An Act to require public universities to provide medication abortion, an Act relative to out-of-hospital birth access and safety, and an Act relative to Medicaid coverage for doula services.
Each of these bills is key to ensuring everyone—regardless of their income, background, or insurance status—receives the timely, high-quality health care they deserve.
As we know, the legal right to abortion and pregnancy care doesn’t guarantee access, particularly for people of color, people with low incomes, those living in rural areas, and immigrants. That’s why each of these bills is so critical to expanding equitable access to high-quality care in Massachusetts. Here’s how:
Deeply ingrained medical and systemic racism have heightened maternal mortality rates for Black and brown people, immigrants, and people with low incomes. Doula support and midwifery care can help address these disparities and save lives.
Doula support ensures patients are taken care of, listened to, and advocated for throughout their pregnancies. Out-of-hospital midwifery care ensures pregnant people can have a birthing experience that meets their individual needs.
Students living on more remote campuses or those who cannot travel to an off-campus health center can face numerous logistical hurdles while trying to access abortion care, including securing transportation, childcare, missing class, or taking time off work. Providing medication abortion, which is safe and has been legal in the United States for over 20 years, on college campuses would greatly improve access to care.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Friday that the Justice Department will dramatically increase its focus on preventing voter suppression by doubling the number of lawyers in the civil rights division, in response to a rash of lawsthat have made it harder to votein many states.
“We will use all existing provisions ... to ensure that we protect every qualified American seeking to participate in our democracy,” Garland said in a speech Friday afternoon.
Garland compared his action to that taken by former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who said that the Justice Department needed “a lot more lawyers” to combat laws in Southern states that were trying to make it harder for African Americans to exercise their right to vote. Kennedy led the department from 1961 to 1964.
Garland said that the modern Justice Department is in a similar position to Kennedy’s DOJ because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which essentially eliminated the policy of “preclearance.”
“The Shelby County decision eliminated critical tools for protecting voting rights,” Garland said.
In numerous states controlled almost entirely by Republicans, there has been a rash of laws proposed and passed in the name of election integrity to make it harder to vote. Some expansions being rolled back were made to accommodate needs during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the new laws have been pushed by many Republicans who continue to spread the baseless rumors and lies about the 2020 presidential election that former President Donald Trump started and continues to talk about.
There has also been a host of laws passed and proposed by mostly Republican legislatures to give state politicians the ability to interfere with elections and even to overturn an election result.
The Shelby decision removed the requirement for state or local governments with a history of racial discrimination to seek permission from the Justice Department before making “changes to state election law — however innocuous — until they have been pre-cleared by federal authorities in Washington, D.C.” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 5-4 majority opinion that “things have changed dramatically” since the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act, and that “problems remain in these states and others, but there is no denying that, due to the Voting Rights Act, our nation has made great strides.” Nine states were covered by the law in 1965, and counties and townships in five other states came under the act in its subsequent renewals.
Garland on Friday called preclearance the “most effective tool to protect voting rights over the last half-century.”
“Today we are again without a preclearance provision, so again the civil rights division is going to need more lawyers,” said Garland, who noted that the doubling of staff will happen in the next 30 days.
Garland also criticized the growing number of states where Republicans who are loyal to Trump are using the falsehoods about the 2020 election to push for new rounds of audits of the results. In Arizona, Republicans in the state Legislature were the first to organize another redundant examination of the vote that has been condemned by voting experts and even Republican officials in the state as amateurish and pointless. But Trump loyalists in other states are seeking to follow suit.
Garland said the audit may have violated federal statutes that deal with the safekeeping of election results, and others that deal with voter intimidation.
The attorney general said the DOJ is also going to step up its investigation and prosecution of “menacing and violent threats” made against election officials at the state and local level, which he said have been on the rise.
On Friday, Tricia Raffensperger, the wife of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, spoke publicly for the first time with Reuters about the many death threats the couple has received because her husband has called out Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.
