The department of health has handed over all Covid-19 vaccine contracts to the legal team of the Health Justice Initiative (HJI) as ordered by the Pretoria high court.
The department — which was given until August 31 to hand over the contracts — has reached an agreement to share the remainder of the documents on the negotiations related to the procurement contracts by no later than September 29.
The HJI asked the department to provide the full record of its negotiations and contracts for Covid-19 vaccines in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (Paia) in February 2022. When the department turned down its request, HJI launched legal action, arguing the government had a constitutional obligation to ensure procurement was transparent, and to provide the public with timely and accurate information.
In a ruling handed down on August 17, the Pretoria high court gave the department of health 10 days to provide the HJI with the records of the Covid-19 contracts it had signed with Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson (J&J), the Serum Institute of India and international vaccine sharing mechanism Covax. It was also ordered to hand over all the details of its negotiations with other parties.
HJI said in a statement the handover of the contracts and the agreement to hand over documents on the negotiations meant the department did not intend to appeal against the judgment.
“We are encouraged that the minister [Joe Phaahla] and the department of health will not be appealing this ground-breaking judgment, and that it has undertaken to release all meeting minutes, agreements and contracts relating to its procurement of Covid-19 vaccines,” the statement said.
“This is an important day for our democracy and for opening up the process of health procurement. It sends a strong signal to powerful pharmaceutical companies and others that in SA transparency cannot be bartered and is not up for sale. There really is no room for this much secrecy in the health or any other sector,” HJI director Fatima Hassan said.
The HJI and its legal team are reviewing what has been handed over by the department to assess if it is complete and compliant with the court order. The HJI and a multi-stakeholder civil society group will analyse the contracts handed over.
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