In the spotlight: inequalities between rich and poor countries in access to vaccines
Audio 05:07
Chinese company Sinopharm said its coronavirus vaccine was 79% effective after phase 3 trials. ERNESTO BENAVIDES AFP / File
By: Aurélien Devernoix
10 mins
Publicity
"
The vaccine divide
" headlines
Liberation
which recalls the figures revealed by the Alliance for a Universal Vaccine, an initiative of several NGOs including Oxfam and Amnesty International: the rich countries which represent 14% of the world population have reserved 53% of the vaccines. more promising.
The United States has thus preempted enough doses to vaccinate four times its population and Europe twice, while some poor countries, very affected by the pandemic such as Kenya or Nigeria, are struggling to obtain supplies.
The consequence, explains
La Croix
, is "
a two-speed world
" where many countries, African in particular, may not be able to vaccinate their populations until 2022, or even by 2024.
A tool created last spring to try to limit inequalities of access
This is the Covax program set up by the World Health Organization (WHO), which aimed to provide 700 million doses of vaccines to 92 countries with limited income or over-indebtedness.
Except that this initiative, deplores
Liberation
, is today in great difficulty: "
The United States very quickly played their part in solo,"
explains the newspaper,
by subsidizing and negotiating directly with the laboratories, then by announcing their withdrawal from l 'WHO
'.
The idea is not to depend on international institutions for the distribution of doses.
Europe followed and little by little each country began to make its own market for vaccines, obviously to the benefit of the pharmaceutical companies developing them.
These have no difficulty in raising the stakes knowing that they estimate that they will only be able to produce vaccines for a third of the world population in 2021. Another problem, explains
La Croix
, is that the negotiations led by Covax with the laboratories would have resulted in lower prices than those sometimes negotiated bilaterally.
So what are the solutions?
Liberation
gives the floor to Oxfam which believes that the monopoly of laboratories on patents must be lifted, in order to allow as many companies as possible to produce vaccines, which would result in putting more doses on the market and lowering the prices.
The NGO also believes that pressure must be put on Western governments, knowing that the laboratories have largely benefited from public funds for their research.
But, explains
La Croix
, European countries in particular prefer to distribute the vaccines they will have in surplus rather than attack the intellectual property of powerful pharmaceutical companies.
The other problem, continues the daily, is that RNA vaccines like that of Pfizer BioNTech are difficult to produce and would require heavy investments for companies located in poor countries.
The solution could ultimately come from South-South solidarity since countries like Brazil, Morocco or South Africa have signed specific agreements: clinical trials have been authorized on their territory in exchange for the installation of part of vaccine production.
These countries could thus give priority to the least favored nations.
"
Visionary
"
An adjective to define Pierre Cardin, the couturier who passed away yesterday at the age of 98.
The newspapers look back on his incredible journey, from the sons of Italian peasants who emigrated to France, to billionaires.
The Parisian
evokes in particular his creative genius which in the 60s "
made the purists vanish
", but seduced the stars and in particular the Beatles who popularized the collarless jacket that the couturier created especially for them.
Stylistic flashes became rarer from the 1980s, but they were replaced by unparalleled entrepreneurial flair.
Le Monde
explains that in the 1960s, Pierre Cardin traveled the planet and seduced from Japan to India via Moscow, New York and Beijing.
With a well-established system, that of licenses: "
he had imagined
", explains the newspaper, "to
have part of his collections manufactured with local fabrics, in order to facilitate transactions and convince his future partners
".
"
A genius of marketing
", bounces
Le Parisien
Analysis shared by
Le Figaro
who believes that the one who has traveled “
35 times around the world
”, “
was the incarnation before the hour of the concept of contemporary couturier
: businessmen as much as creator
”.
"
I was a dissenter, a provocateur, an adventurer,
" Pierre Cardin had confided on a daily basis, driven in particular by a feeling of revenge, he who in his childhood had been confronted with racism because of his Italian ancestry.
But it was above all towards the stars that the couturier turned throughout his career, explains
Le Monde
, with his “
cosmos style and straight, geometric cuts, with porthole patterns, cut for space
”.
"
The first to make ready-to-wear,
" recalls in
Le Parisien
Jean-Paul Gaultier, who began his career at the Cardin house.
"
He taught me freedom and there are things that I realized that I owe him because he did not forbid himself anything
".
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