APA-Cape Town (South Africa) World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Thursday called on African countries to strengthen cooperation on production of vaccines in light of the ever-present threat of health emergencies and inequity in distribution of medicines at the global level.
Speaking during the launch of the mRNA Technology Hub at Afrigen Biologics Vaccines in South Africa’s Cape Town, Tedros said there was need for a coherent regional strategy for mRNA vaccine production in Africa “because it would not be sustainable for each nation to build this facility.”
“There is also a need for regional infrastructure planning, including how these vaccines will be procured during emergencies,” Tedros said.
He added that the continent also needed to develop “a regional plan for supply chain ingredients as some countries produce reagent vials and other important components.”
“All of this underscores the need for coordination, collaboration and coherence at national, regional and global levels,” the WHO chief said.
The WHO picked Afrigen Biologics in 2021 for a pilot project to give low- and middle-income countries the know-how and license to make COVID-19 vaccines in what South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called “a historic step.”
Afrigen Biologics has used the publicly available sequence of Moderna Incorporated’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine to make its own version of the shot – AfriVac 2121 – at laboratory scale and was now scaling up production, according to the firm.
Tedros revealed that the WHO believed that the mRNA technology transfer programme “holds huge promise, not just for increasing access to vaccines for COVID-19 but for other diseases, including HIV, Tuberculosis as well as other diseases affecting low- and middle-income countries for which there are either no vaccines or the vaccines are insufficient.”
“For this reason WHO is establishing an mRNA research and development network to provide a collaborative platform to expand the mRNA production pipeline, accelerate product development and access to knowhow.”
According to the WHO, although some 69.7 percent of the global population had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as of March 2023 but this figure was still below 30 percent in low-income countries.
NM/jn/APA