Experts Urge Africa to Consider COVID-19 Vaccine Production

March 25/2021(ENA) Africa has the capacity to produce its own coronavirus vaccines but political will and infrastructural investments are needed in helping finance the lifesaving injections to stop the pandemic, experts have urged.

Speaking at an Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) high-level panel discussion on whether Africa was ready to finance its own vaccines, leading experts felt that Africa needed strong political will and all round infrastructure to successfully roll out its own vaccines.

World Health Organisation Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom  Ghebreyesus, told the panel that the development of vaccines in record time in response to COVID-19 had given the world reason for hope but the hope must be for all.

“No country can vaccinate its way out of the pandemic not even the wealthy ones,” Dr. Tedros  emphasized, warning that as long as the virus was circulating, it would mutate. Equitable vaccine distribution the only sure way to stop it.

Citing the World Bank, he noted that for every month that vaccines were delayed in reaching Africa, 13.8 billion USD was lost in GDP.

The pandemic has underscored the critical gap in vaccine manufacturing in Africa which represents 26 percent of the world’s population but has less than 0.1 percent of world vaccines production, he indicated.

The Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), bemoaned Winnie Byanyima said “We are one year with this global pandemic and vaccine apartheid is unfolding before us.”

She stated that a year on, there was no global plan to get COVID-19 vaccines to everyone and to end the pandemic, yet 25 years ago the world acted on ending HIV/AIDS.

Rich countries and big pharmaceuticals were not sharing the vaccine know-how while African countries were paying double the price for vaccines than rich countries, she added.

Responding to questions of sharing intellectual property, the Global COVID-19 Task Force Leader and President of Pfizer Vaccines, Susan Silbermann said Pfizer was ready to work with Africa.

It has laid out a plan to share expertise, data and tools publicly in drug development and in manufacturing capacities, she noted.

According to the Director of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) John Nkengasong, Africa is ready to produce vaccines because it has produced vaccines for other diseases.  

“We know that vaccines are the fundamental underpinning of the health security on the continent and we have to invest in that,” Nkengasong said, adding that, “If we do not do this we will move towards the endemicity of this virus on the continent and will have devastating effects going forward.”

President of the Africa-Export Bank (Afreximbank), Benedict Oramah, said Africa had no choice but to invest in developing its own vaccines.

The Bank has provided a 2 billion USD funding for the purchase of 270 million doses of vaccines. Africa needs more than 6 billion USD to procure vaccines to complement the COVAX facility.