Lived Realities of Vaccine Injustice in the Covid Pandemic and Beyond

Thanks to scientific labour and decades of tax-funded public research, breakthrough Covid-19 vaccines are reaching the public. But not all publics – especially people living in the most exploited and impoverished regions globally. Powerful alliances of wealthy nations, philanthropic foundations, and monopolistic corporations are thwarting efforts to roll out Covid-19 vaccines more equitably. What are the lived experiences of public health specialists and citizens in developing regions experiencing systematic vaccine shortages? Which groups are militating against the sharing of publicly funded vaccine manufacturing know-how, and why? Which theories and tools from human rights law and feminist political economy can challenge the intransigence and power of these groups?

Felogene Anumo is a pan-African feminist activist who is passionate about using her creativity, politics and intellect to strengthen feminist movements to build collective power. She leads AWID's #FeministBailout and economic recovery plans which aims to bring together feminist and social justice movements to rethink, reimagine and demand the re-centering systems of care in our economies and ecologies. 

Judith Bueno de Mesquita is Co-Deputy Director of the Human Rights Centre and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law and Human Rights Centre. An inter-disciplinary scholar who has been working at the intersection of international human rights law and global public health for two decades, her current research focuses on COVID-19 and human rights. Her academic research has explored how the right to heath can be interpreted in the context of COVID-19, and how international human rights law can be used to legally underpin global. Solidarity in the COVID-19 response. She has also worked closely with international organisations on COVID-19 and human rights, amongst other serving as a Consultant with the Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR).

Professor Anuj Kapilashrami is an Interdisciplinary social scientist trained in Sociology and Public health and Professor in Global health Policy and Equity in the School of Health & Social Care at University of Essex. Her work lies at the intersections of health politics and development praxis, with particular interest in understanding their interface with equity, human rights, and social justice. She a is longstanding member of the People’s Health Movement, and convened its Scotland chapter (until 2019). Kapilashrami also serves as Trustee on the board of Health Poverty Action and as Gender Equity advisor for WHO’s Human Reproduction Programme.

Professor Amos Laar is a tenure-track academic at the University of Ghana School of Public Health. Currently, his research and professional practice focus on three distinct, yet related areas of public health: Bioethics (including food ethics, ethics & public health, health & human rights); Public Health Nutrition (including food environments, food systems, and nutrition-related non-communicable diseases); and Social Public Health (including how social forces, commercial forces, and structural violence influence realization of health). He is the Principal Investigator of the IDRC-funded ‘MEALS4NCDs project’, which is providing Measurement, Evaluation, Accountability and Leadership Support for NCDs prevention in Ghana.   

Professor Linsey McGoey is director of the Centre for Economic Sociology and Innovation at the University of Essex. She is the author of two books No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy and most recently The Unknowers: How Strategic Ignorance Rules the World, and has written for The New York Times and Guardian newspaper on inequality and billionaire power today.