Africa CDC to discuss development, manufacture of its own vaccines
Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) will hold a two-day high level Virtual Conference to discuss the Development and Manufacture of its own Vaccines.
The conference is to be held today and tomorrow and is aimed at expanding Africa’s Vaccine Manufacturing to achieve a new public health order.
It said a critical lesson that Africa had learnt from the Covid-19 pandemic is the need to invest in and build its own capacity and capabilities in manufacturing vaccines.
“The continent’s low manufacturing capability exposes Africans to supply chain risks such as the one witnessed with the current Covid-19 challenges,” the centre said.
Africa CDC target is to vaccinate 60 per cent of the population- up to 750 million people in the continent- high global demand, and bottlenecks encountered by the Serum Institute of India, is making it difficult for the continent to achieve this goal.
“The target was 90 million by April. So far 36 million people have been vaccinated. We still have a lot of effort and intervention to put in place.” Dr. Ahmed Ogwell, the Deputy Director Africa CDC said.
Many countries in the continent including Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria received their first consignment, mainly of the Astrazeneca vaccine from the COVAX facility.
With the fate of the second and other consecutive consignments hanging in the balance, the African Union’s bloc of 55 member states has shifted its focus to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
In a deal signed last week, the CDC is looking to secure up to 400 million doses even with additional supplies from Johnson & Johnson.
This is in addition to the Astrazeneca vaccine supply from Serum Institute of India to Africa through the COVAX vaccine-sharing facility.
