Six African countries selected to kick off Covid-19 jab production

The World Health Organization (WHO) has selected the first six African countries to receive the technology needed to produce mRNA vaccines, a move aimed at ramping up production and countering vaccine inequity

Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia will gain access to technology and training to enable them to design and manufacture their own Covid jabs, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

“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,” said Tedros.

“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.”

The global mRNA technology transfer hub was established last year to support manufacturers in poorer countries to produce their own vaccines, ensuring that they have the know-how to manufacture mRNA shots at scale and according to international standards.

The mRNA technology, used in Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, provokes an immune response by delivering genetic molecules containing a code into human cells, teaching cells how to produce the proteins needed to mount a defence against the virus.

But the companies have declined WHO’s request to share the recipes for the jabs. South African scientists are now piecing together what we know about the Covid vaccines publicly — in part from patent applications — to develop an mRNA vaccine of their own similar to Moderna’s.

Africa produces just 1 per cent of the vaccines it needs and has struggled to access supplies of Covid jabs. Only 17 per cent of the continent’s 1.3 billion population has received a first dose of the vaccine, compared to 77 per cent of people in the UK.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, of South Africa said: “This is an initiative that will allow us to make our own vaccines and that, to us, is 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.”

Although set up to address the Covid-19 emergency, the hub has the potential to expand manufacturing capacity for other health products, says WHO, putting African countries in the driver’s seat when it comes to the kinds of vaccines and medicines they need to address their health priorities.