PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Andreas Albertsen TI - A vaccine tax: ensuring a more equitable global vaccine distribution AID - 10.1136/medethics-2021-107418 DP - 2022 Oct 01 TA - Journal of Medical Ethics PG - 658--661 VI - 48 IP - 10 4099 - http://jme.bmj.com/content/48/10/658.short 4100 - http://jme.bmj.com/content/48/10/658.full SO - J Med Ethics2022 Oct 01; 48 AB - While COVID-19 vaccines provide light at the end of the tunnel in a difficult time, they also bring forth the complex ethical issue of global vaccine distribution. The current unequal global distribution of vaccines is unjust towards the vulnerable living in low-income countries. A vaccine tax should be introduced to remedy this. Under such a scheme, a small fraction of the money spent by a country on vaccines for its own population would go into a fund, such as COVAX, dedicated to buying vaccines and distributing them to the world’s poorest. A vaccine tax would provide a much-needed injection of funds to remedy the unequal distribution of vaccines. The tax allows for a distribution that, to a lesser degree, reflects the ability to pay and is superior to a donation-based model because it minimises the opportunity for free-riding.