By: Natasha Archary
The Department of Health has 10-days to make the country’s Covid-19 vaccine procurement contracts public.
On Thursday, 17 August, the Health Jusstice Initiative (HJI) won its case against the Minister of Health and Information Officer at the Department.
On 22 February 2022, the HJI launched legal proceedings for the disclosure of all Covid-19 vaccine contracts and any applicable agreements with relevant companies and entities.
This follows an access to information request to the National Department of Health (NDoH) which was refused.
Head of the HJI, Fatima Hassan said this is a massive victory for transparency and accountability, after a lengthy battle to have the contracts disclosed.
“These vaccines have been procured at great cost, using substantial public funds. The actual cost has not been disclosed, although the 2021 National Budget allocated an amount of R10 billion for the purchase of Covid-19 vaccines.
It is for this reason that the HJI used South Africa’s access to information law, the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) to request access to the vaccine procurement contracts, which government refused.
Now that the Pretoria High Court ruled in our favour, all Covid-19 vaccine contracts must be made public, and the costs of the case were awarded in our favour too.”
By June 2023, more than 38 million Covid-19 vaccine doses were administered in SA, having received several million vaccine doses by directly buying from pharmaceutical companies, through the COVAX facility, and by donations.
However, the content of these agreements, including the complete details of the contracting parties is unknown and remains a secret.
The HJI believes, that at the very best, contracts must have at least been entered into with the SA government, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, as these are the vaccines SA administered in the national vaccine rollout programme.
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