The Vatican’s Coronavirus Commission and the Pontifical Academy for Life have issued a joint statement calling for a coordinated international effort to ensure the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines worldwide and the risks associated with not being vaccinated. to become.
The document emphasizes the “critical role of vaccines in defeating the pandemic, not only for individual personal health but also for protecting the health of all,” the Vatican said in a statement accompanying the document on December 29.
“The Vatican Commission and the Pontifical Academy of Life remind world leaders that vaccines must be provided fairly and equitably to all, with priority given to those most in need,” the Vatican said.
“It’s a matter of justice. This is the time to show that we are one human family. ”
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The pandemic has exacerbated a threefold threat of simultaneous and interlinked health, economic and socio-ecological crises that are affecting the poor and the vulnerable excessively, ‘the document reads. “As we move toward a just recovery, we must ensure that immediate cures for crises become a stepping stone to a more just society, with an inclusive and interdependent set of systems.”
Pope Francis established the COVID-19 Commission in April with the aim of ‘expressing the church’s concern and love for the whole human family in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic’.
Led by Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, the commission has the task of working with other offices in the Vatican to coordinate its work, including an analysis and reflection on socio- economic and cultural challenges of the future and proposed guidelines to address them. ”
Cardinal Turkson said that while the Vatican is grateful for the rapid development of the vaccine by the scientific community, it is “now up to us to ensure that it is available to all, especially the most vulnerable.”
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“It’s a matter of justice,” he said. “This is the time to show that we are one human family.”
The pandemic exacerbated a triple threat of simultaneous and interlinked health, economic and socio-ecological crises. ‘
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said his office was working with the commission to address the ethical issues surrounding the development and distribution of the vaccines.
The joint document reiterates the points made by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on 21 December regarding the moral implications of receiving COVID-19 vaccines developed or tested using cell lines derived from aborted fetuses.
It also quoted the congregation’s 2008 commission, Dignitas Personae, as saying that “serious reasons may be morally proportionate to justify the use of such biological material.”
The Papal Academy for Life, the document reads, also paid attention to the development of vaccines that use tissue from aborted fetuses; Although it was a “commitment to ensure that each vaccine is not related to its preparation on any material resulting from an abortion,” he also said that “the moral responsibility to vaccinate is repeated to serious health risks for children and the general population. ”
The new document served a number of purposes, most notably to make the vaccine ‘available and accessible to all’.
The moral responsibility to vaccinate is repeated.
Part of the process, according to the document, would be to consider how to reward those who developed the vaccine and reimburse ‘the research costs and risks that companies have undertaken’, while also recognizing the vaccine as a good to which everyone should have access, without discrimination. ”
The document quotes Pope Francis, who said in his Christmas message that mankind cannot allow ‘the virus of radical individualism to overwhelm us and make us indifferent to the suffering of other brothers and sisters’, and nor can it allow ‘the law’. of the market and patents take precedence over the law of love and health of mankind. ”
According to the monastery and the academy, an exclusive focus on profit and trade is “not ethically acceptable in the field of medicine and health care.”
‘Investments in the medical field must find their deepest meaning in human solidarity. To make this happen, we need to identify appropriate systems that promote transparency and cooperation, rather than antagonism and competition, ”the document reads. “It is therefore important to overcome the logic of ‘vaccine nationalism’, understood as an attempt by different states to own the vaccine in faster periods as a form of prestige and benefit, and obtain the necessary amount for its inhabitants. . ‘
Pope Francis said that humanity could not allow “the virus of radical individualism to overwhelm us and make us indifferent to the suffering of other brothers and sisters.”
The Vatican document called for the negotiation of international agreements to manage the vaccine patents “to facilitate universal access to the vaccine and to avoid potential commercial disruptions, especially to keep the price stable in the future.”
According to the document, such an agreement would enable governments and pharmaceutical companies to work together in the industrial production of the vaccine simultaneously in different parts of the world, ensuring faster and more cost-effective access everywhere.
The Vatican’s COVID-19 Commission and the Pontifical Academy for Life also called for widespread campaigns to educate people about the ‘moral responsibility’ to be vaccinated.
Due to the ‘close dependence’ between personal and public health, the commission and the Pontifical Academy warned that refusing the vaccine ‘could also be a risk to others.’
Given the absence of an alternative vaccine that has not been developed or tested on ‘the results of a voluntary abortion’, the document emphasized that the vaccines currently available are ‘morally acceptable’ and that moral objections raised by a one can use to refuse vaccination, ‘non-binding. ”
“For this reason, such a refusal can seriously increase the risks to public health,” especially when some people, such as those who are immunocompromised, “can only rely on vaccinating other people (and herd immunity) to reduce the risk of infection. to avoid, “the document said. As a result, an increase in infections would increase hospitalizations, “with consequent overload for health systems, to a possible collapse, as happened in different countries during this pandemic.”
“It hinders access to health care, which in turn affects those who have fewer resources.”
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