Today’s One Minute Brief is an important one in collaboration with Oxfam and there are some great prizes to be won. We hope the OMBLES will help share this powerful message and encourage action.

Whatever your views on the vaccine, there’s one thing for certain…it should never be about money and only the richer countries being given access to it. That’s why we’re supporting today’s campaign to ensure that vaccines are available to all who want to take it and to encourage the relevant people to take action so that this is about people not profits.

The People’s Vaccine Alliance is a coalition of over 50 organisations worldwide - urging pharmaceutical corporations and governments (especially the wealthy countries) to do everything they can to ensure COVID19 vaccines are available all people, in all countries, free of charge.

Right now, governments are defending Big Pharma monopolies that are dictating who lives and who dies – allowing them to keep the recipe (science, technology and know-how – also known as the ‘patents’) of the vaccine for themselves. No one company can produce enough for the whole world. So long as vaccine solutions are kept under lock and key, there will not be enough to go around.

We need some fresh, creative poster and simple, impactful headlines to help us to continue building momentum around and action toward a People’s vaccine, not a profit vaccine.

Please tweet your entries to @OneMinuteBriefs, @Oxfam and @PeoplesVaccine with the hashtag #PeoplesVaccine & link to peoplesvaccine.org

You can also use the other campaign hashtags #TripsWaiver #JoinCTAP

Prizes

First Place: £200
Second place: £100
Shortlisted entries could also be shared by the People’s Vaccine Alliance!

Context:

Our best chance of all staying safe is to ensure a COVID-19 vaccine is available for all as a global common good. This will only be possible with a transformation in how vaccines are produced and distributed — pharmaceutical corporations must allow the COVID-19 vaccines to be produced as widely as possible by sharing their knowledge free from patents.

Instead, they are protecting their monopolies and putting up barriers to restrict production and drive-up prices, leaving us all in danger. And the governments of rich countries are protecting them to do so. No one company can produce enough for the whole world. So long as vaccine solutions are kept under lock and key, there won’t be enough to go around. We need a People’s Vaccine, not a profit vaccine.

Aim:

To create posters to support our campaigning efforts around the annual shareholder meetings of big pharmaceutical companies who currently have a monopoly over the COVID-19 vaccines.

Vaccine inequality is at its worst right now, with rich countries vaccinating 1 person every second, while the majority of poor countries have yet to give a single dose.

Over the month of April, we will work to pressure big pharma to put people before their profits, by dropping their vaccine patents to enable generic drug companies to produce COVID-19 vaccines and treatments at a larger scale and at a cheaper price to ensure everyone on the planet has the opportunity to get one as quickly as possible.

Objective

On April 22nd, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer will be holding their annual shareholder meetings, and the World Trade Organization will continue debating whether to waive patent legislation that’s preventing the science of the vaccines from being shared.

Rich country governments can help shift power by coming out in support of the WTO waiver, while pharma companies like J&J and Pfizer can volunteer to share the science so everyone can get a vaccine. We intend to use both of these moments as part of our Global Week of Action for a People’s Vaccine to pressure both targets to ensure a people’s vaccine over a profit vaccine.

In order to pressure rich country governments, they need to see these pharma companies feeling public pressure though media, social media and direct action from concerned citizens. The posters produced in partnership with One Minute Briefs will become a one of several tools we’ll use to help garner public and political attention.