Vaccine access: World’s poorest people suffer at the hands of free market dynamics, says WHO

Important progress on vaccine access has been made over the past two decades, but diseases associated with markets that are deemed to have little commercial value “remain neglected,” the World Health Organization has warned.1In its Global Vaccine Market Report 2022 WHO says that inequitable distribution is not an issue unique to covid-19 vaccines, as poorer countries have been “consistently struggling” to get vaccines that wealthier countries also want.It says that the vaccine equity problems faced during the covid-19 pandemic have shone a light on the issues experienced in other vaccine markets, such as the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine against cervical cancer, which has been introduced in only 41% of low income countries but 83% of high income countries.WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said, “The right to health includes the right to vaccines, and yet this new report shows that free market dynamics are depriving some of the world’s poorest…
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