DStv Channel 403 Monday, 23 December 2024

SA overpaid for vaccines

JOHANNESBURG - South Africa was forced to overpay for COVID-19 vaccines.

 

That’s according to the Health Justice Initiative and other stakeholders.

 

Last week the HJI won a court bid to access the covid vaccine contracts and details on how the deals were negotiated.

 

The group has now studied the contracts entered into at the height of the pandemic.

 

They have found that the government paid 33-percent more than the African Union for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

 

South Africa also paid the the Serum Institute of India two and a half times more for a generic version of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine than the UK and 15-percent more for J&J vaccines compared to European countries.

 

The Health Justice Initiative says big pharmaceutical companies bullied South Africa into agreeing to terms for vaccine contracts that were one-sided.

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