In world first, Nigeria introduces new 5-in-1 vaccine against meningitis.

27 APRIL 2023 – Just 3 percent of all COVID-19 vaccine doses delivered in 2021 went to Africa, home to one-fifth of the world’s population, according to the World Health Organization. In the vast debacle of global vaccine inequity, it was Africa that was left furthest behind as the pandemic raged, and that had the least leverage to negotiate contracts..

African vaccines: local manufacturers are struggling to access the market – what must change.

25 APRIL 2023 – Two recent developments in South Africa have underscored the opportunities – and challenges – facing vaccine production on the continent.

One was the visit by the World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to take stock of Africa’s mRNA vaccine hub. The hub was launched in mid-2021 in a bid to make the latest vaccine technology more readily available to developing countries.

SA’s cheap shot at Biovac.

19 APRIL 2023 – SA’s state-backed vaccine manufacturer Biovac has been dealt a blow by the department of health after it switched to a cheaper supplier of shots to protect children against deadly preumococcal diseases.

AFRICAN BIOMANUFACTURING
Workforce Training and Skills Development Programme.

Ramping up vaccine manufacturing in Africa.

Today, less than 1% of vaccines used in Africa are manufactured locally. This means that African countries are reliant on imports to immunize their people, including against long-standing diseases like polio and newer scourges like COVID-19.

The latest episode in the Mission Imagination series features Mr. Patrick Tippoo, Chief Science and Innovation Officer at South Africa-based Biovac and Executive Director of the African Vaccine Manufacturing Initiative (AVMI), which advocates for the establishment of vaccine development and manufacturing capacity in Africa.

[GVIRF 2023] WHO, CEPI, and AVMI say establishing regional manufacturing is easy but sustaining it is difficult.

30 MARCH 2023 – The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the stark global disparities in vaccine access and this spurred regions to start thinking of a regional response to future pandemics such as building regional manufacturing capacity.

Regional manufacturing capacity emerged as a cross-cutting theme in the sessions at the Global Vaccine and Immunization Research Forum (GVIRF 2023) conference.

Tanzania confirms first-ever outbreak of Marburg Virus Disease.

21 MARCH 2023 – Brazzaville/Dar es Salaam – Tanzania today confirmed its first-ever cases of Marburg Virus Disease after laboratory tests were carried out following reports of cases and deaths in the country’s north-west Kagera region.
Tanzania’s National Public Health Laboratory analysed samples to determine the cause of illness after eight people developed symptoms including fever, vomiting, bleeding and renal failure. Five of the eight cases, including a health worker, have died and the remaining three are receiving treatment. A total of 161 contacts have been identified and being monitored.

AFRICA CDC hosts lead partners of Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM).

15 MARCH 2023 – The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) hosted its lead partners at a meeting on the sidelines of the Africa Health Agenda International Conference 2023 held in Kigali, Rwanda.

“Safeguarding Africa’s health can only be achieved through our ability to manufacture the health products we need on the continent. The new public health order outlines it well in its Pillar 2: Expanded Manufacturing of Vaccines, Diagnostics, and Therapeutics to democratize access to life-saving medicines and equipment,” said Dr. Ahmed Ogwell, Acting Director of Africa CDC.

Devex CheckUp: Cracking the code on Marburg virus.

16 FEBRUARY 2023 – Equatorial Guinea announced its first outbreak this week of the rare and deadly Marburg disease — a hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola.

There are no vaccines or antiviral treatments approved for the virus, but there are candidates — two of which have data from phase 1 trials and three others that haven’t reached that stage. Researchers from the Marburg Virus Vaccine Consortium held an emergency meeting on Tuesday to examine the prospect of quickly rolling out clinical trials amid the current outbreak.

Five ways to scale up the African vaccine manufacturing industry.

How can vaccine manufacturers in Africa expand their manufacturing capacity and capabilities? Deborah King, Vaccines Lead at Wellcome, highlights five key areas for support – including access to finance and training opportunities.

Africa is home to 1.4 billion people who require an estimated one billion vaccine doses for protection from vaccine-preventable diseases. Yet only 1% of those vaccines are produced on the continent.

Is there a regional solution to vaccine inequity?

17 JANUARY 2023 – The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent global rollout of vaccines revealed the good, the bad and the ugly of the global community’s ability to come together and respond. The good – the delivery of safe and effective vaccines in under a year, saving nearly 15 million lives. The bad – despite vaccine development, there have been 6.6 million confirmed deaths, as of December 2022, and an estimated $14—28 trillion of economic damage globally.

Are African-made vaccines the solution to vaccine inequity?

12 JANUARY 2023
The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted a variety of global health inequalities, prime among them has been the devastating consequences of vaccine inequity. While high-income countries and those with robust vaccine manufacturing capacity gained swift access to doses once vaccines became available, those without were forced to wait.