New $1 billion plan for African vaccine manufacturing -GAVI Alliance
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[December 08, 2023]
By Jennifer Rigby
LONDON (Reuters) -Up to $1 billion will be available to boost African
vaccine manufacturing as part of a new scheme set up by Gavi, the
Vaccine Alliance, the global health organization said on Thursday.
The “African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator” aims to address the
inequality in access to vaccines that plagued the continent during the
COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to use domestically-produced shots to
tackle diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of African children
every year, such as cholera and malaria.
The African Union (AU) has set a target for the African vaccine
manufacturing industry to supply over 60% of the total vaccine doses
required on the continent by 2040, up from around 1% now. A host of
initiatives have been launched across the continent since COVID-19, but
some have struggled amid high start-up costs, particularly as demand
waned as the pandemic receded.
The funding for the accelerator comes from leftover money in the COVAX
initiative, a scheme set up during the pandemic to help vaccines reach
the world’s poorest countries. It has been approved by Gavi's board
after consultation with the AU, the Africa Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), and other partners. The scheme is due to launch in
June 2024 at an event hosted by the Africa CDC and France.
“The big aim here is to have a pot of money set aside for a ten year
period to enable a sustainable African vaccine industry to be produced,”
said David Kinder, Gavi’s director of development finance, in an
interview.
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Researchers studying the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis test samples
in a laboratory run by South African biotech company TASK in Cape
Town, South Africa, May 11, 2020. Picture taken May 11, 2020.
REUTERS/Mike Hutchings//File Photo
At the same Gavi meeting in Accra,
Ghana, the board also approved plans for around $290 million to help
"catch up" routine immunisations for children, which were hit hard
by pandemic-related disruptions, as well as a $500 million "first
response" fund, to ensure money is available immediately when a new
pandemic hits.
HOW IT WORKS
The African accelerator will pay manufacturers a sum when their
vaccines are approved by the World Health Organization. It will
provide another payment if companies win bids to supply vaccines
through Gavi, which co-finances purchases with low-income countries.
This will allow manufacturers to price products competitively,
Kinder said, so African countries can choose African-made vaccines
for the price of products made elsewhere.
The initiative focuses on diseases, including cholera, plus new
technologies like viral vector and mRNA vaccines, which were
transformative during COVID-19 and could help in future pandemics,
Kinder added.
(Reporting by Jennifer Rigby; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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