WHO’s Vaccine Redressal

Subject – Science and Tech

Context – The global health body’s ‘no-fault’ compensation programme for Covid vaccine recipients needs a booster shot of visibility.

Concept –

A “global vaccine injury compensation mechanism” had been announced by the World Health Organization (WHO) in February.
“For vaccines that come through COVAX, there is a common indemnification language which is used in the contract and there is a no-fault compensation scheme... a global scheme to provide compensation to anybody who suffers a serious adverse event like injury or death due to the vaccine supplied through COVAX.”
It is for the first time such a system is in place globally.
All of these vaccines are used under emergency-use listing, which means when they were initially used there still wasn’t a lot of real-world data. So you cannot predict all the rare side-effects that could happen.
If you suffer an adverse event, there is a procedure where it has to be investigated by the local safety committee, the cause of the event has to be found out, it has to be certified that it’s been due to a vaccine etc, and then people can apply for compensation.
WHO’s ‘no-fault compensation’ allows recipients to claim relatively quickly without litigation.

Indemnity –

Vaccine manufacturers seek indemnity from governments to limit financial exposure on account of adverse side-effects from the vaccine.
The European Union, the UK, Latin America, Australia and the US all offer indemnity in some form to vaccine makers, whether under legislation or supply contracts.