Head of global pharma group suggests pandemic ‘social contract’

Rich countries engaged in vaccine hoarding during the Covid-19 pandemic leaving Africa scrambling to get supplies. Keystone / Siphiwe Sibeko

The president of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) says rich industrialised countries and the pharmaceutical industry must prepare for the next pandemic. Critical of vaccine nationalism, Thomas Cueni wants to ensure that poorer countries get access to vaccines faster when crises hit.

What is needed is a kind of social contract, argues Cueni in an interview published by the SonntagsZeitung newspaper. He says industry is prepared to reserve part of the production for poorer countries. In return, rich countries must provide initiatives like COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility) with enough funding to buy the reserved production.

Vaccination priority should be given to people who work in healthcare or are over 65 years old, he says, respectively 1% and 8% of the global population.

“A willingness on the part of companies to reserve part of the production for these population groups in poorer countries right from the start in the event of a pandemic could be a real game changer,” he says.

Vaccine nationalism

Cueni notes that rich countries engaged in a kind of hedging at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. They ordered all promising vaccines to ensure they have the vaccine that ultimately gets approved. Then they hoarded vaccines on a large scale. “This vaccine nationalism was the big problem,” he says.

Africa, in particular, was left behind. “Therefore, by 2040, Africa wants to cover around 60% of its vaccination needs from its own production,” he notes. “But that doesn’t happen overnight, because an entire infrastructure has to be set up.”

The costs of a pandemic preparedness fund pale in comparison with the costs of the pandemic, he notes, citing calculations by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Such a fund would require around $20 billion. The Covid-19 pandemic is expected to cost $13.8 trillion by 2024.

Based in Geneva, IFPMA represents the biopharmaceutical industry at the global level. Cueni has been at the helm of the organisation since 2017, having previously served as secretary general of Interpharma, the association of pharmaceutical research companies in Switzerland.