The race to vaccinate the globe has been described as a two-track pandemic:
Higher-income countries have the head start: already administering 44%
of the world’s Covid vaccines.
Meanwhile, lower-income countries have administered just 0.4%.
“We are in the race of our lives, but it’s not
a fair race, and most countries have barely left the starting line.”
Africa’s only received enough vaccines for 3% of its population.
The slow start is partly because for decades Africa has imported 99% of its vaccines.
So what would it take to jump-start local vaccine manufacturing?
“Manufacturing vaccines locally is an important step towards African self-reliance.”
Today, there are only 5 countries with vaccine capabilities on the continent:
Egypt, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa, and Tunisia all have companies that can package
and label vaccines, some can also do a process called fill and finish- getting vaccines ready
for distribution. But none can do:
End- to- end manufacturing. That means making vaccines
from start to finish, from creating the antigen all the way through to packaging it.
But before vaccine production can even begin, the first step is to secure a:
Patent waiver on the vaccine’s intellectual property.
Basically, that involves big pharmaceutical companies sharing their “secret recipe” for
the Covid-19 vaccine with other countries so they can make and sell their own vaccines.
In June, leader’s of the world’s largest economies pledged to donate
870 million vaccines to poorer countries through the COVAX sharing scheme...
But according to the WHO to end the pandemic by June 2022 we need 11
billion doses to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population. So far, we’ve reached just 21%.
But only 2 of those countries we mentioned - the US and France-
support waiving the patent to vaccine technology.
The UK, Germany, and the EU as a bloc all oppose it.
“We have allowed the market forces to distribute vaccines because they were developed and generated
by the private sector and what you have is a situation where those who can afford-
will get - and so it’s worsened the gap between the haves and the have nots.
Especially because the wealthy countries put in advance market commitments to buy
far more than they’d ever need.” Firms like Pfizer and BioNTech have agreed
to provide vaccines to COVAX more cheaply- but to date not a single vaccine developer has agreed to
participate in the WHO programme set up in 2020 to facilitate the sharing of intellectual property.
In the meantime, big pharmaceutical companies are reaping huge profits - with
nine new vaccine billionaires created since the start of the pandemic.
But even with a waiver secured it’s unlikely Africa will be able to produce Covid vaccines
in time or at scale just yet: (8) “Patents are only one step in that process,
you need to have the technologies, capabilities, and the capacities. Because it’s no use having
rights or access to a patent but you don’t have the technologies or what we call the know-how…”
Know-how means hiring and training up hundreds of staff to do everything from the science-
making the antigen- to managing facilities, using newly developed technology and equipment,
along with regulating, packaging, and distributing.
And to do that requires money: So, we asked a private pharmaceutical
company in Kenya what it would take for their existing lab to begin producing vaccines at scale:
“It’s a huge investment: Up to $150 million, and to enable us
as investors to put in that we need some sort of license commitment from the government…”
For that commitment to work, African governments would have to agree to support
local African pharmaceutical companies by buying a set number of vaccines from them every year,
stopping them from being pushed out by the companies who hold monopolies on the market.
So, with all these steps in place, how long could it take for Africa to produce its own vaccines?
Probably around 2-4 years.
But this is about the long game - removing barriers to local
production is an investment not just against Covid19 but the next pandemic:
“We are hoping that the Covid dialogue will get us in a state of readiness for future pandemics,
a better position to supply our continent with vaccines for routine immunisation, as well
as identifying potential organisms that will cause outbreaks relevant to Africa only…”
In April, the African Union pledged to increase the share of vaccines manufactured in Africa from
1% to 60% by 2040, a tall order given the current reality. But by making the right choices now, it
could set itself up to be prepared for any future outbreaks and minimise the damage they might do.