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The treaty establishing AMA came into force in
November but the agency currently exists only on paper.
Decisions over who will lead the agency and where it will be
headquartered are scheduled for this year.
Financial and technical support to the new agency is seen as
crucial to help it to begin operations. This in turn would be a
boost for the continent's vaccine and drugs industry, which
needs a trusted regulator to flourish.
The European Commission, Germany, France, Belgium, and the Gates
Foundation will invest more than 100 million euros ($113.93
million) to support AMA and African national regulatory
agencies, a person familiar with the plan told Reuters on
Friday.
The goal is to allow these agencies to achieve what the World
Health Organization (WHO) defines as Maturity Level 3 for
vaccine producing, which is "the minimum WHO requirement for
effective regulatory oversight for quality local vaccine
production," the official said.
According to an internal EU Commission document with slides,
seen by Reuters, part of the money will be in grants and will
also go to the European Medicines Agency.
EMA, which is the only continent-wide drugs regulator so far
will "provide technical assistance to African counterparts via
scientific collaboration, joint inspections, training, and
notably the AMA," the document says.
The race to establish AMA comes after the COVID-19 pandemic
exposed the vulnerabilities of the region to health crises. Just
over 5% of medicines, and 1% of vaccines, consumed by the
population of 1.2 billion people are produced locally.
($1 = 0.8777 euros)
(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio, Editing by
Louise Heavens)
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