The initiative announced in Paris will incentivize and offset the initial costs of vaccine manufacturing on the continent.
French President Emmanuel Macron has joined several African leaders to kick off a planned $1.1 billion project to accelerate vaccine production in Africa, after the COVID-19 pandemic exposed inequalities in access to the vaccine. inoculation.
The launch of the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator at an event in Paris on Thursday will provide financial incentives to boost local vaccine manufacturing on the continent.
African Union Commission head Moussa Faki Mahamat welcomed the initiative, saying it “could become a catalyst to promote the pharmaceutical industry in Africa and foster collaboration between member states.”
Africa imports “99 percent of its vaccines at an exorbitant cost,” he said.
Macron said the program “will be an essential step towards a true African vaccine market.”
The European Union said the bloc and its member states will contribute $800 million to the vaccine manufacturing plan. He said the program will offset upfront costs and ensure demand for African-made vaccines.
“Importantly, it will also support the sustainable growth of Africa's manufacturing base and contribute to the African Union's ambition to produce the majority of vaccines needed by African countries on the continent,” the EU said in a statement.
Many African leaders and advocacy groups say Africa was unfairly denied access to COVID-19 treatment tools, vaccines and testing kits, which many wealthier countries purchased in large quantities, after the pandemic was declared. in 2020.
Helen Rees, executive director of Wits RHI at the University of the Witwatersrand, said the COVID pandemic revealed the lack of equity in access to vaccines.
“When we had really good access to vaccines here [in Africa], many countries had already experienced COVID outbreaks and many people had immunity against natural infection. The impact of the vaccines was much less here simply because we received them too late,” he told Al Jazeera.
“COVID started a conversation about access to vaccines, medications and diagnostics – everything needed to control outbreaks and stop vaccine-preventable diseases. And that dialogue is focused on equity and how we increase access in the African region.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) and advocacy groups want to help Africa better prepare for the next pandemic, which many health experts consider inevitable.
“There is no doubt that delays in reaching low-income countries and communities with vaccines cost lives,” WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday. “We cannot allow the same thing to happen next time. And there will be a next time.”
When the coronavirus pandemic began, South Africa was the only country on the continent with the capacity to produce vaccines, officials say, and Africa produced a small fraction of all the world's vaccines.
The WHO failed in its efforts to help countries agree on a “pandemic treaty” (to improve pandemic preparedness and response) before its annual meeting last month.
The project was shelved largely due to disagreements over sharing information about the pathogens that cause epidemics and the high-tech tools used to combat them.
Negotiators will resume work on the treaty in hopes of reaching an agreement by the next WHO annual meeting in 2025.
Thursday's event in Paris, attended by leaders from Botswana, Rwanda, Senegal and Ghana, also aimed to give a financial boost to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a public-private partnership that helps deliver needed vaccines to developing countries around the world.
Gavi is seeking $9 billion to bolster its vaccination programs in the poorest countries from 2026 to 2030.
Gavi CEO Sania Nishtar said the group aims to move faster and offer more vaccines, including expanding the malaria vaccine rollout, which began in Cameroon this year.
The global vaccine alliance wants to reach “the greatest number of children, covering them against the greatest number of diseases… in the shortest time possible,” Nishtar told Reuters news agency on Wednesday before the meeting.
