The U.K. government “failed people” in lower-income countries by not requiring drug companies to distribute vital COVID-19 treatments developed with £1.5 billion (about $1.8 billion) of public money, a highly critical new report argues.
The firms were able to “limit supply and charge high prices” because ministers did not impose “public interest conditions” — an approach described as “neo-colonial” by the campaign groups STOPAIDS and Just Treatment.
Their report finds high-income nations then bought up diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics at high monopoly prices, while low- and middle-income countries were starved of the treatments when the pandemic struck.