About event
Join the SSN and Professor Anne Pollock (King's College, London) for a hybrid seminar on Pharmaceutical Manufacturing for the Common Good
Join the SSN as we host Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, and 4S president, Anne Pollock (King’s College, London), for a hybrid seminar on her ongoing research on vaccine and pharmaceutical access in Africa. Anne will be joined in dicussion by Laura Foster (Indiana University) after her talk. Join in the conversation and Q and A via YouTube Live chat, or on BlueSky with #SSNseminar.
Please select a ticket to attend in-person, or online.
Transforming the Pharmaceutical Landscape from and for Africa: Re/emerging Regional Visions of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing for the Common Good
Africa CDC’s promotion of regional manufacturing of vaccines and pharmaceuticals marks an interesting development in longstanding advocacy for access to medicines in Africa, which has been long focused on the linked issues of intellectual property and price on the global market. The Covid experience underscored that agreements on IP and price cannot on their own realise access, in a context in which the needs of Africans are not prioritised by global producers. It also demonstrated that countries with local manufacturing capabilities and know-how, including some in the global south, were better equipped to secure vaccines for their populations – despite global supply shortages. Reflecting this, ensuring the capacity for African manufacturing of vaccines has been provocatively described by the Africa CDC Director as the “second independence of Africa”. In this paper, I draw on ongoing research that I am currently undertaking, in collaboration with Lauren Paremoer, that explores how are key actors involved in these initiatives are endeavouring to transform the pharmaceutical landscape from and for Africa. Particularly attuned to how they are mobilising imaginaries of sovereignty, international cooperation, and solidarity in pursuit of what is increasingly framed as “health security,” the talk will articulate historical legacies and future-oriented visions that simultaneously constrain and create the conditions of possibility of making pharmaceuticals in Africa for the common good.
Speaker bio:
Anne Pollock is Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London, and Honorary Professor at the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies. She also currently serves as the President of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). She is the author of three books: Medicating Race: Heart Disease and Durable Preoccupations with Difference (Duke 2012), Synthesizing Hope: Matter, Knowledge, and Place in South African Drug Discovery (Chicago 2019), and Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States (Minnesota 2021). Her ongoing research engages with three intersecting areas: racism and health, feminist theory and biomedicine, and social studies of pharmaceuticals.
Discussant bio:
Laura Foster is an Associate Professor of Gender Studies, and Affiliate Faculty in the Maurer School of Law and Program of African Studies at Indiana University – Bloomington (USA). She is also a Senior Researcher with the Intellectual Property Unit at the University of Cape Town, Faculty of Law. Her research explores relationships of technoscience, governance, gender, race, and plants within South Africa.
Dr. Foster is known for her 2017 book, Reinventing Hoodia: Peoples, Plants, and Patents in South Africa, which examines struggles over patent law, pharmaceutical drug-making, and Indigenous knowledge as a site for understanding a changing South African politics.
The Livestream link is already available here. We will email it to online registrants just before the event, too. Please note that you will need to login via a YouTube account to take part in the chat/ Q and A.
Event Contact:
ssn-info@deakin.edu.auShare