Overcoming Barriers to Equitable Distribution of COVID-19 Vaccines

With COVID-19 vaccines in limited supply, the current moment calls for an unprecedented cooperative effort among global institutions, governments, and the private sector (especially pharmaceutical corporations) in order to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines are allocated and distributed equitably, rather than based on nationalistic goals.

The Pulitzer Center has partnered with McGill Global Health Programs and the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University to present a special webinar on Thursday, March 25, at 12:00pm EDT that will explore global COVID-19 vaccine distribution plans and progress, and global efforts toward equity in vaccine distribution.

This webinar will explore the following questions:

• What are the reasons behind the current inequitable global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines?
• What solutions exist or are being developed to address the global vaccine access and equity problem?
• What impact will the current global vaccine distribution plan have on the possibility of global population immunity?

The discussion will feature panelists:

• Tahir Amin, an attorney with more than 25 years of experience in intellectual property law. In 2004, Amin left private legal practice and moved to Bangalore, India, where he was instrumental in the passage of a health-friendly patent law. That process led him to eventually co-found I-MAK with the purpose of re-shaping intellectual property laws to better serve the public interest.
• Fatima Hassan, a human rights lawyer and social justice activist and the founder of the Health Justice Initiative. She is the former executive director of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa (OSF-SA). She has dedicated her professional life to defending and promoting human rights in South Africa, especially in the field of HIV/AIDS.
• Gagandeep Kang, a professor at Wellcome Trust Research Laboratory and the Division of Gastrointestinal Sciences at Christian Medical College in Vellore, India. Kang conducts inter-disciplinary research on enteric infections and child health. She is a member of many WHO advisory committees and chairs the Immunization Technical Advisory Group for the WHO’s South East Asian Region.

Pulitzer Center grantee and Berlin-based science journalist Kai Kupferschmidt will serve as the moderator. 

To register for this event, please visit this page.