The Vatican coronavirus commission and the Pontifical Academy for Life issued a joint statement calling for a coordinated international effort to ensure the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines worldwide and highlighting the risks involved in not being vaccinated.
The document highlights the “critical role of vaccines to defeat the pandemic, not just for individual personal health, but to protect the health of everyone,” the Vatican said in a statement accompanying the document on 29 December.
“The Vatican commission and the Pontifical Academy of Life remind world leaders that vaccines should be provided to everyone in a fair and equitable manner, giving priority to those most in need,” said the Vatican.
“It is a matter of justice. This is the time to show that we are a human family. “
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The pandemic has exacerbated “a triple threat of simultaneous and interconnected health, economic and socio-ecological crises that are disproportionately affecting the poor and vulnerable,” the document said. “As we move towards a just recovery, we must ensure that the immediate cures for crises become steps towards a more just society, with a set of inclusive and interdependent systems.”
Pope Francis established the COVID-19 commission in April with the aim of expressing “the Church’s concern and love for the entire human family in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic”.
Led by Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Department for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, the commission is tasked with collaborating with other Vatican offices to coordinate its work, including “an analysis and reflection on the socio-economic and cultural challenges of the future and the 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 everyone, especially the most vulnerable”.
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“It is a matter of justice,” he said. “This is the time to show that we are a human family.”
The pandemic has exacerbated “a triple threat of simultaneous and interconnected health, economic and socio-ecological crises”.
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said his office is working with the commission to address ethical issues related to the development and distribution of vaccines.
The joint document reiterated the points made on December 21 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith regarding the moral implications of receiving COVID-19 vaccines that were developed or tested using cell lines derived from aborted fetuses.
He also cited the 2008 congregation’s instruction, “Dignitas Personae”, which states that “serious reasons can be morally proportionate to justify the use of such biological material.”
The Pontifical Academy for Life, says the document, also addressed the issue of developing vaccines from tissues of aborted fetuses; although it demands a “commitment to ensure that every vaccine has no connection in its preparation with any material from an abortion”, it also said that “the moral responsibility to vaccinate is reiterated in order to avoid serious risks to the health of children and the general population . “
The new document issued a set of objectives, especially around making vaccines “available and accessible to everyone”.
The moral responsibility to vaccinate is reiterated.
Part of that process, the document said, would be to consider how to reward those who developed the vaccine and to reimburse “the research costs and risks that companies have taken”, while recognizing the vaccine “as a good that everyone should have access to. , without discrimination. ”
The document quoted Pope Francis, who said in his Christmas message that humanity could not allow “the virus of radical individualism to get the better of us and make us indifferent to the suffering of other brothers and sisters”, nor could it allow “the law of the market and patents take precedence over the law of love and health of humanity. “
The dicastery and the academy said that an exclusive focus on profit and trade “is not ethically acceptable in the field of medicine and health”.
“Investments in the medical field must find their deepest meaning in human solidarity. For that to happen, we must identify adequate systems that favor transparency and cooperation, instead of antagonism and competition ”, states the document. “It is, therefore, essential to overcome the logic of ‘vaccine nationalism’, understood as the attempt of several states to have the vaccine in faster terms as a form of prestige and advantage, obtaining the necessary quantity for its inhabitants.”
Pope Francis said that humanity cannot allow “the virus of radical individualism to get the better of us and make us indifferent to the suffering of other brothers”.
The Vatican document called for the negotiation of international agreements to manage vaccine patents “in order to facilitate universal access to the vaccine and avoid potential commercial interruptions, especially to keep the price stable in the future”.
Such an agreement, says the document, would allow governments and pharmaceutical companies to collaborate in industrial production of the vaccine simultaneously in different parts of the world, ensuring faster and more economical access everywhere.
The Vatican’s COVID-19 Commission and the Pontifical Academy for Life have also called for extensive campaigns to educate people about the “moral responsibility” of getting vaccinated.
Due to the “close interdependence” between personal health and public health, the commission and the Pontifical Academy have warned that refusing to take the vaccine “can also pose a risk to other people”.
Given the absence of an alternative vaccine that is not developed or tested with “the results of a voluntary abortion”, the document emphasized that currently available vaccines are “morally acceptable” and that the moral objections that someone can use to refuse vaccination ” are non-binding. ”
“For this reason, such a refusal can seriously increase the risks to public health”, especially when some people, such as the immunosuppressed, “can only rely on vaccination coverage from others (and herd immunity) to avoid the risk of infection ”Said the document. As a result, an increase in infections would increase hospitalizations, “with subsequent overload on health systems, until a possible collapse, as happened in several countries during this pandemic”.
“This hinders access to health care, which, again, affects those who have less resources.”
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