As COVID-19 vaccines continue to roll out around the world, they've offered us some hope in tackling the pandemic and getting back to normalcy — but unless they can reach everyone on the planet, that’s unlikely to happen.

Most pharmaceutical companies have reserved the right to set their own vaccine prices, often at exceedingly high levels. This limits the ability of low- and middle-income countries to access life-saving tools that could help the world achieve herd immunity and end the pandemic once and for all.

Scientists and medical experts alike have called on the global pharmaceutical industry to offer the vaccine at an affordable cost and to start putting people’s lives over profit, but Big Pharma has yet to step up, which poses a significant challenge to our recovery efforts.

Global Citizen spoke with Dr. Samira Guennif — a French economist specializing in health, intellectual property, pharmaceutical patents, and access to medicines and health care in developing countries — about the importance of setting fair vaccine prices to help the world overcome the pandemic.

What does a fair price look like, in your opinion, as an economist? 

It's definitely not a global price, which means that a firm cannot decide that, “the price is this price and this will be set for the north and for the south.” It means that we need differential pricing. Developed countries would accept to pay a higher price compared to low- and middle-income countries.

Read the full interview with Samira Guennif about vaccine pricing by Sarah El Gharib at Global Citizen.