COVID-19 vaccines, public health goods and Catholic social teaching: Why justice must prevail over charity in the global vaccine distribution

HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies

 
 
Field Value
 
Title COVID-19 vaccines, public health goods and Catholic social teaching: Why justice must prevail over charity in the global vaccine distribution
 
Creator Ballano, Vivencio O.
 
Subject Bioethics; Moral Theology; Ethics; Sociology; Social Ethics; Catholic Theology COVID-19 vaccines; Catholic social teaching; distributive justice; charity; patents; big pharma
Description Applying the Roman Catholic Church’s set of moral principles on social concerns called Catholic social teaching (CST) on charity, distributive justice, private property and the common good, and utilising some secondary data and scientific literature, this article argues that establishing distributive justice for the global distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines must be a priority than donating millions of doses in the name of charity to address vaccine scarcity. Catholic social teaching teaches that the right to private property is a basic right but has moral limits and is subordinated to the moral principles on the universal destination of earth’s goods and the common good.Contribution: The current COVID-19 vaccines are developed by people and organisations outside the pharmaceutical companies and largely funded using taxpayers’ money. Thus, by virtue of justice, these vaccines must belong to all nations as global public health goods. Patents are to be suspended to allow poor countries to reproduce the popular vaccines and address the current vaccine shortage.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor Research Institute for Human and Social Development (RIHSD)
Date 2022-01-20
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Secondary Analysis
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/hts.v78i4.7065
 
Source HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies; Vol 78, No 4 (2022); 9 pages 2072-8050 0259-9422
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/7065/21493 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/7065/21494 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/7065/21495 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/7065/21496
 
Coverage North America; Europe; Asia; Latin America Contemporary world COVID-19 Vaccines; Medicines; Values; Patent Law
Rights Copyright (c) 2022 Vivencio O. Ballano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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