Good afternoon ladies and gentleman
I am delighted to be part of this discussion on Covid-19 mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub.
This year we have made significant strides in curbing the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic through the vaccination programme roll-out, reducing severity of the disease and number of deaths. Like any new initiative, the vaccination programme has not been without challenges, starting off with constrained supply and now being faced with increased supply but waning demand and vaccine hesitancy. Currently we are faced with the widening vaccine gap between developing and developed countries, further impacted by the global supply chain crisis and this threatens the global public health.
The Covid-19 pandemic has presented us with opportunities to strengthen provision of healthcare, increase access and improve health outcomes. It is for these reasons that South Africa has welcomed the call by the World Health Organization (WHO) and its COVAX partners for South Africa to be in a consortium comprising Biovac, Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, a network of universities and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to establish its first COVID mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub. Local manufacture is a necessary factor to enable vaccine production scale up, ensuring that Africans have stable, predictable supply of the right vaccine, at the right dosing and at the right time. At the Presidential Health Summit held in 2019, South Africa recognised the need for and importance of local pharmaceutical manufacture and production to meet patient medicine needs and resolved that there is a need to establish knowledge and skills capabilities for local production. This initiative therefore gives momentum to the resolution to establish knowledge and skills capabilities for local production.
We have the opportunity to build on existing systems, using innovation and technology, collaborate with big pharma and academia to ensure that delivery of vaccines is prioritized for South Africa and the continent at large.
There are multiple reasons why South Africa is well positioned to lead this initiative, we have existing facilities to pilot, we have an established relationship with Biovac since 2013 to establish local vaccine manufacturing capability for the provision of vaccines and we have a strong and capable regulatory authority that will support in establishing Good manufacturing processes and ensuring compliance. All the partners in the consortium bring valuable experience and expertise. Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines is a biotechnology company focuses on product development, and will provide training to Biovac and in time will be a training hub for other manufacturers on the continent.
Recently South Africa has shown that we have world class scientists who detected the new Omicron variant through genomic surveillance. The consortium will leverage the expertise of these scientists in academia to harness science, technology and broader knowledge in order to produce research-based evidence vaccines.
The current Covid-19 vaccination programme is testament that collaboration across sectors is power, and it is possible to achieve better health outcomes for all South Africans. We are confident that we have the necessary experience to make this a success for the African continent.
