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Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera
Health
Sumayya Ismail

South Africa ‘held to ransom’ by big pharma, overcharged for COVID vaccines

A vial of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine [File: Robyn Beck/AFP]

Johannesburg, South Africa – Big pharmaceutical companies “bullied” South Africa into signing unfair agreements that forced the country to overpay for COVID-19 vaccines compared with Western nations, according to a nonprofit that lobbied for the details to be released.

The details were revealed on Tuesday in an analysis by the Health Justice Initiative (HJI), a South African NGO campaigning against public health inequality after it won a court bid last month to get the government to release its contracts.

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