7 January 2022.

Access to affordable vaccinations around the world is vital to combatting the pandemic from both a humanitarian and economic perspective.

Together with more than 65 leading institutional investors, we’re calling on COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers to step up their effort to increase the availability of vaccines worldwide.

While the World Health Organization (WHO) has outlined a clear path for pharmaceutical companies on how to provide access to and the deployment of affordable vaccinations globally, they are particularly lacking in aid to less developed countries.

We’ve therefore signed the group Investor Statement¹, along with sending letters to pharmaceutical companies asking them to make the global availability of vaccines part of the remuneration policy of managers and directors. We believe that by calling on pharmaceutical companies to make the WHO targets part of their remuneration policy, we’ll hold executives accountable to solving this problem.

What are the WHO’s targets?

a. Prioritise and fulfil COVAX and AVAT contracts as a matter of urgency.

b. Provide full transparency on production and manufacturing schedules and the planned and actual distribution of Covid-19 vaccines to low-income countries.

c. Engage with countries with high vaccination coverage to optimise global deliveries and sharing of vaccines.

d. Commit to sharing know-how, licensing and production facilities to ensure future vaccine supply is reliable, affordable, available and deployed to every country.

The Investor Statement follows up from the previous statement of April 2020 in which pharmaceutical companies were asked to join forces and do their utmost to minimise the spread of the virus and its consequences. Vaccines have now been developed but the group of investors has concluded that vaccination rates in less developed countries are still too low and further steps by pharmaceutical companies and governments are needed.

To learn more about our recent engagement with pharmaceutical companies, or about responsible investment more broadly, please get in touch.

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¹ & image source: https://www.responsible-invest...