The World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia as the first six countries that will receive the technology needed to produce mRNA Covid-19 vaccines in Africa.
WHO’s global mRNA technology transfer hub was established in 2021 to support manufacturers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to produce their own Covid-19 vaccines and protect the public health of their populations.
The mRNA technology transfer hub, it is understood, will ensure that LMICs have all the necessary operating procedures and know-how to manufacture mRNA vaccines.
Although primarily set up to address the Covid-19 emergency, WHO noted that the hub has the potential to expand manufacturing capacity for other products as well, giving LMICs access to the kinds of vaccines and other products they need to address their public health priorities.
The global health body also noted that it was ready to work with the beneficiary countries to develop a roadmap and put in place the necessary training and support.
‘The WHO mRNA technology transfer hub is part of a larger effort aimed at empowering low- and middle-income countries to produce their own vaccines, medicines and diagnostics to address health emergencies and reach universal health coverage’, WHO said in a statement.
‘The initial effort is centred on mRNA technologies and biologicals, which are important for vaccine manufacturing and can also be used for other products, such as insulin to treat diabetes, cancer medicines and, potentially, vaccines for other priority diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV’.
The ultimate goal, according to WHO, is to extend capacity-building for national and regional production to all health technologies in LMICs.
So far in 2022, just 11 percent of people in Africa have taken two doses of the Covid-19 jab, with experts and campaigners blaming vaccine inequality for the low level of vaccination.
The African Union (AU) had accused vaccine manufacturers of denying African countries a fair chance to buy them, and urged manufacturing countries to lift export restrictions on vaccines and their components.
The People’s Vaccine Alliance and other campaigners had also criticised the European Union’s (EU) opposition to the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waiver to ensure greater access to Covid-19 vaccined in LMICs.
If countries agree on the waiver, countries can choose not to grant or enforce IP (patents, industrial designs, copyright, and trade secrets) related to all Covid-19 medical products and technologies.
This will ensure global unfettered technology transfer and data sharing to enable indigenous manufacturers in LMICs produce vaccines in their locality.
‘No other event like the [Covid-19] pandemic has shown that reliance on a few companies to supply global public goods is limiting, and dangerous’, WHO Chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. said.
‘In the mid- to long-term, the best way to address health emergencies and reach universal health coverage is to significantly increase the capacity of all regions to manufacture the health products they need, with equitable access as their primary endpoint’.
The President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, also said that the technology transfer hub was very important.
‘It means mutual respect, mutual recognition of what we can all bring to the party, investment in our economies, infrastructure investment and, in many ways, giving back to the continent’, he said.
South Africa and India were the proponents of the TRIPS waiver after they jointly introduced a document requesting a waiver from certain provisions of the TRIPS agreement for the prevention, containment and treatment of Covid-19 at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) In October 2020.
Source: WHO
Photo source: WHO
