Thread by @nickdearden75

So to be clear what’s happened, Big Pharma employed a not-for-profit to undermine South Africa’s WHO-backed mRNA hub. In its place they propose a neo-colonial scheme to make vaccines offshore to bypass Africa’s governments. 🧵 #PeoplesVaccine 1/ bmj.com/content/376/bm…

Reminder, the hub is trying to produce an mRNA vaccine. Moderna & Pfizer refused to share their recipe. Maybe they believed the racist assumption that Africa couldn’t possibly produce mRNA? Seems they were wrong. 2/ aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/3/…

So now, Big Pharma uses a not-for-profit to call for the hub to be “terminated immediately” @ellenthoen: “If you run a not-for-profit and you go around trying to stop people from developing lifesaving vaccines, then I don’t know what your agenda is but it smells really bad” 3/

Big Pharma’s been forced to come up with an alternative: export factories in ships, made in Europe, staffed by Europeans outside African regulations. Behind the imperial mindset, the racist assumptions, is the reality that Big Pharma wants to maintain its monopoly. 😡😡 4/

The mRNA hub is so important. It proposes an open, collaborative approach to medical research, which they’ll share with the world. Big Pharma want to maintain their stranglehold on this revolutionary technology so they can make a killing. 5/ theconversation.com/africas-first-…

Remember “By the end of last month 10 billion [vaccine] doses were administered around the world, but only 346 million had been given out in African countries. Booster programmes are under way in Europe and North America despite WHO’s pleas for first doses to be prioritised.” 6/

Africa has been irrelevant to Western leaders and Big Pharma right up to the point where Africans start building an alternative system. Then they must be crushed. We can’t allow it to happen. Defend the mRNA hub. #PeoplesVaccine Now. 7/ act.globaljustice.org.uk/suspend-covid-…