New Delhi: The world’s largest vaccination campaign is going on in the fight against Corona in India. The success of this vaccination campaign, which started last year, was initially being feared, but the speed with which our country did the vaccination has surprised the whole world. India has done all this mainly using indigenously made Covaccine and Kovishield Vaccine.
Have you thought why a large number of foreign vaccine companies could not come to our country. This has been disclosed for the first time by the Ministry of Health. Actually, the reason for this was the grandfathering of foreign vaccine companies.
The Health Ministry said that Moderna and Pfizer’s vaccine was looking at India as a big market. Both these American companies thought that India would never be able to vaccinate more than 136 crore population of its country without a foreign vaccine.
It was informed by the Ministry of Health that when the first wave of coronavirus was at its peak in India in November 2020, about 1 lakh cases were coming every day. At that time Moderna and Pfizer were negotiating to buy the vaccine from the Indian government or rather trying to blackmail India.
Why did the foreign vaccine not come to India? Till now the government has been giving diplomatic answers to this question, but for the first time the Health Minister made it clear that this is a new India which runs on its own terms. We did not allow to bow down to foreign companies. We made our vaccine.
The Health Minister said that the American company Moderna placed a condition in front of the Government of India that it would sell the vaccine and that too with conditions. Moderna kept the indemnity against the liability clause i.e. if any side effect occurs due to the vaccine or if someone dies due to the vaccine, the company will not have any responsibility.
He told that similarly the condition of Pfizer Company was that they get Sovereign Immunity Waiver. Broadly speaking, this waiver means that no case can be brought against the company under the law of India. He said that the vaccines that are being made in India today. They are either completely indigenous or are being made in India itself.
He said that Covaccine is made in India itself, Kovishield is made in India only. Apart from these, the Government of India has approved single dose vaccines of Sputnik and Johnson & Johnson. Both of these are also being made by Indian pharma companies.
The Health Minister told how these companies have exploited many countries in the name of selling vaccines. The Pfizer company had told the Argentine government that if it wants a corona vaccine, then it should buy such an insurance that will protect the company in the event of damage to a person after applying the vaccine, that is, if there is a side effect of the vaccine. The company will not give money to the patient, but the insurance company will give it.
He told that when the government had accepted the company’s request, Pfizer put a new condition for the vaccine and asked to reserve money in the name of the company in the International Bank. Build a military base in the capital of the country in which medicine should be kept safe. An embassy should be created in which the employees of the company should be kept so that the laws of the country do not apply to them.
The Health Minister said that similarly Pfizer placed conditions in front of Brazil. The Pfizer company had put three such difficult conditions in front of Brazil in exchange for the vaccine. The first condition is to deposit the vaccine money in the bank’s international account. The second is that the company will not be prosecuted if there are side effects and the third condition is that Brazil should keep its government assets with the company as a guarantee.