By Abdel Monem Fawzi
Africa has the capacity to produce its own coronavirus vaccines but political will and infrastructure investments are needed to finance the lifesaving injections to stop the pandemic.
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.
Egypt, has already obtained a licence to manufacture the Chinese Covid-19 vaccine Sinovac locally. It will start producing China’s Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine. The first 2 million doses will be produced in June at the plants of the Egyptian Holding Company for Biological Products and Vaccines.
South Africa, Senegal and Nigeria are well positioned for vaccine manufacturing. Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia can ramp up their capabilities quickly: a reminder for a continent importing 80 per cent of its pharmaceutical needs to revamp these value chains.
During Africa’s vaccine Manufacturing Virtual Conference, convened on the continent’s leaders, including heads of state, health and business sector representatives, were in one accord in urging the continent to produce its own vaccines, as this will lead to health and economic security. The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed that access to essential medicines and vaccines is a national and continental security issue. In Africa’s bid to achieve universal healthcare for its people, there is need to take local manufacturing of essential medicines and vaccines as a critical part of Africa’s developmental goals. Promoting local manufacturing of essential health products in Africa must go beyond access to safe essential medicines and improved health outcomes. While both are extremely critical, local pharmaceutical manufacturing has an additional impact because it improves socio-economic development, creates jobs (economic benefits) and ensures health security in our communities. Implementation of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan for Africa (PMPA), under the leadership of the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), provides the opportunity for the continent to develop an implementation plan that will guarantee the supply of efficacious medicines to the 1.2 billion people in Africa. The objective of the PMPA is to facilitate improved access to affordable essential medicines and catalyse local production in Africa through increased political commitments and workable solutions. For the workable solutions to become a reality, there must be a commitment to support all the auxiliary services in the Pharma ecosystem. As countries on the continent recover from the impact of the pandemic and rekindle their economies, supporting local manufacturing of pharmaceutical products in Africa must be considered as a strategic economic input and its role as a national and continental security issue that mitigates against shortages in the supply of essential medicines, medical devices and vaccines. AUDA-NEPAD’s approach to local pharmaceuticals production and African wide vaccine manufacturing leverages on the institution’s mandate to coordinate and execute priority regional and continental projects, strengthen the capacity of African Union Member States and regional bodies, advance knowledge-based advisory support and to serve as the continent’s technical interface with all Africa’s development stakeholders and development partners. AUDA-NEPAD leverages the research that has been done over the years to regionally cite and indicate what companies are more poised to commence local production of specific medical products or vaccines. Secondly, the organisation leverages on the good work done with Regional Economic Communities in ensuring that the right companies in the right region are enabled to manufacture, access, and utilise regional platform for procurement and supply chain management and receive relevant training onsite and online. Thirdly, AUDA-NEPAD leverages on existing initiatives like African Medicines Regulatory Harmonisation initiative, a clear foundation for the African Medicines Agency, the annual convening of the Africa Pharma Platform, the 100K SMMEs and the Home-Grown Solution business accelerator. Lastly leveraging on the support from development partners, AUDA-NEPAD through the Africa Pharma Platform, the Vaccine Manufacturing initiative, and the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonisation initiative, will over the next three years: Establish and operationalise the Africa Pharma Partners platform secretariat to support conduct of in-depth assessment and gap analysis of 100 pharma companies and coordinate implementation. Support the operationalisation of a Fund for African Pharmaceutical Development (FAP-D) in conjunction with strategic partners. Advocate for ratification of the treaty for establishment of the African Medicines Agency, which is the most urgent thing that Africa needs to today. Support further engagements on Production of Essential Vaccines in Africa through the Coalition of African Research & Innovation (CARI) to draw and implement short-term, medium-term, and long-term roadmap with a view to attain sustainable capacity for vaccine development and manufacturing in Africa before 2030. It is hoped the initiatives above will ultimately strengthen the continent’s ability to produce high quality, affordable pharmaceuticals across all essential medicines; attract increased investments into local production in Africa, improve the fragmented regulatory systems and contribute to the aspiration of the African Continental Free Trade Area. The capability to produce vaccines requires coverage of a broad range of disciplines, a fully integrated approach, pooling finances, skills development, policy coherence, regulation, infrastructure, technology to mention a few. Deliberate effort is needed to establish robust coordination and governance framework to galvanise and optimise the efforts of both public and private sector while minimising duplication and wastage of resources. The good news is we have the possibility to produce this vaccine on the continent and we could build a new public health order.
The panel agreed that bolstering capacity in Africa to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines would go a long towards helping the continent’s recovery.
The most important thing we learned from this pandemic, is that health is not a luxury but a fundamental human right and the foundation of social and political stability.
