Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Health has lauded the selection of five African nations as the first beneficiaries of technology from South Africa’s mRNA vaccine hub.
On Friday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) named Kenya, Nigeria, Tunisia, Senegal and Egypt as the countries that will receive the technology to produce their own mRNA vaccines.
In a statement, portfolio committee chairperson Dr Kenneth Jacobs says the hub provides an opportunity for African countries to produce their own vaccines, ensuring the African continent is self-sufficient in the supply of vaccines.
“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.
“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.”
Announced last year, the mRNA hub is part of an initiative driven by WHO, the Department of Science and Innovation, Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, Biovac, the South African Medical Research Council, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the Medicines Patent Pool.
The WHO describes the transfer hubs as training facilities, where the technology is established at industrial scale and clinical development performed. WHO will complement this activity and assist other countries in Africa and other low- and middle-income countries to strengthen bio-manufacturing capacity as well as regulatory capacity.
mRNA vaccine technology has been used in shots for two of the COVID-19 vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna. It is also regarded as easier to scale than other vaccine technologies.
WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus explained the mRNA tech transfer hub is already bearing fruit, adding that beneficiary countries will benefit from technology and knowledge sharing.
“It has produced its own mRNA vaccine based on publicly available information about the composition of an existing vaccine. We expect clinical trials to start…this year with approval expected in 2024.
“We expect the benefits of this initiative will extend far beyond COVID-19 by creating a platform for vaccines against other diseases, including malaria, tuberculosis and even cancer. This is a strategic investment not just for COVID-19, but for all the major health problems that we face. The hub is not just for South Africa, but for Africa and the whole world because the beneficiaries will be distributed all over the world.”
Reacting to the announcement, president Cyril Ramaphosa added: “The World Health Organisation has listened to our collective call to establish COVID-19 manufacturing sites in low- and middle-income countries in the midst of vaccine inequality.”
The president also reiterated his long-standing call for the waiver of TRIPS agreements, which prohibit self-manufacturing of certain vaccines based on the intellectual property (IP) rights placed on the technology and information needed to do so.
Said Ramaphosa: “Governments that are really serious about vaccine access should ensure we approve the TRIPS waiver as we have put forward, rather than hide behind IP and the profitability of the originators.
“We are facing a global pandemic that will stay with us for a long time and all that has been asked for is that TRIPS waiver should be done within a set period of time so as to enable those countries that do not have easy access to vaccines to have access to vaccines. We are talking about the lives of hundreds of millions of people, rather than the profitability of the few companies.”
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