Professor of Global Health Law in the School of Law at the University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.
An associate tutor and academic researcher in the School of Law at the University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.
Health Hum Rights. 2022 Dec;24(2):177-189.
In this paper, we explore the strategies utilized by civil society organizations to improve access to medicines during the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 health crises. In particular, we seek to illuminate why some of the successful approaches for increasing access to antiretrovirals for HIV/AIDS in the early 2000s failed in creating equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines. While civil society has historically mobilized human rights to facilitate greater access to essential medicines, we argue that earlier strategies were not always sustainable and that civil society is now mobilizing human rights in radically different ways than previously. Instead of focusing chiefly on securing an intellectual property waiver to the TRIPS Agreement, civil society organizations are now challenging vaccine injustice, rejecting the "charity discourse" that fuels Global South dependency on Global North actors in favor of scaling up manufacture in low- and middle-income countries, and moving to embed the right to access medicines in a new World Health Organization pandemic treaty with civil society organization participation and meaningful representation from low- and middle-income countries. Such approaches, we contend, will lead to more sustainable solutions in order to avert further health care disasters, like those seen with two distinct but related struggles-the fights for equitable access to essential medicines for HIV/AIDS and for COVID-19.
在本文中，我们探讨了民间社会组织在艾滋病毒/艾滋病和 COVID-19 卫生危机期间为改善药品获取而采用的策略。特别是，我们试图阐明为什么 21 世纪初为增加艾滋病毒/艾滋病患者获得抗逆转录病毒药物的机会而采用的一些成功方法在为 COVID-19 疫苗创造公平的全球获取机会方面失败了。虽然民间社会历来利用人权来促进更多地获取基本药物，但我们认为，早期的策略并不总是可持续的，民间社会现在正在以与以前截然不同的方式动员人权。民间社会组织现在正在挑战疫苗不公平，拒绝助长南方国家对北方国家行为体依赖的“慈善话语”，转而支持在中低收入国家扩大生产，将获得药品的权利纳入新的世界卫生组织大流行条约，其中包括民间社会组织的参与和来自中低收入国家的有意义的代表性，而不是主要关注确保对《与贸易有关的知识产权协定》的知识产权豁免。我们认为，这些方法将导致更可持续的解决方案，以避免进一步的医疗保健灾难，就像在两个截然不同但相关的斗争中看到的那样——为艾滋病毒/艾滋病和 COVID-19 获得基本药物的公平获取而进行的斗争。
