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- Six African countries have been chosen to establish their own mRNA vaccine production, according to the World Health Organization
- This step has been taken since the continent is largely shut out of access to Covid jabs. The countries selected to receive technology are Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia
- These countries will act as vaccine hubs to ensure Africa gets its own jabs to fight the Covid and other diseases
Six African countries have been chosen to establish their own mRNA vaccine production, according to the World Health Organization. This step has been taken since the continent is largely shut out of access to Covid jabs. The countries selected to receive technology are Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia. These countries will act as vaccine hubs to ensure Africa gets its own jabs to fight the Covid and other diseases.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the EU-Africa meet being held at Brussels that the best way to address health emergencies and reach universal health coverage was to significantly increase the capacity of all regions to manufacture the health products they need. WHO has been pleading for equitable access to vaccines in order to beat the pandemic blues. WHO came heavily against the vaccine hegemony of the rich countries leaving Africa lagging behind other continents in the global vaccination efforts.
Currently, only one percent of the vaccines used in Africa are produced on the continent. The total population of the continent is 1.3 billion. The WHO set up a global mRNA technology transfer hub in South Africa last year.
The global hub’s role is to ensure that manufacturers in those nations have the know-how to make mRNA vaccines set against the international standards. The global hub will have the potential to expand manufacturing capacity for other vaccines and products, such as insulin to treat diabetes, cancer medicines and, potentially, vaccines for diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV. Only 11.3 percent of Africans had been fully immunized by the start of February.
