Africa-Press – South-Africa. The World Health Organisation (WHO) officially launched its mRNA vaccine technology hub in Cape Town on Thursday – a facility established during the Covid-19 pandemic to help poorer countries that struggle to access life-saving medication.
In what South African President Cyril Ramaphosa described as a historic step in 2021, the WHO picked South African biotech firm Afrigen Biologics for a pilot project to give poor and middle-income countries the know-how and licences to make Covid-19 vaccines.
Afrigen Biologics used the publicly available sequence of Moderna Inc’s mRNA Covid-19 vaccine to make its own version of the shot – AfriVac 2121 – at lab scale and it is now scaling up production.
The vaccine candidate, which must still be tested on humans, is the first to be made on the basis of a widely used vaccine without the assistance and approval of the developer. It is also the first mRNA vaccine designed, developed and produced at lab scale on the African continent.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement:
The hub decided to pursue the vaccine on its own after global pharmaceutical firms, including Moderna and Pfizer, declined to provide the technical know-how to replicate their vaccines, mainly due to intellectual property concerns.
The visit by the WHO director-general and senior health officials over five days will include discussions over the programme’s sustainability, the science of mRNA technologies and its potential use to combat other diseases, such as HIV and tuberculosis, that disproportionately affect poorer countries.
The WHO said 69.7% of the global population had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine as of March 2023, but that figure was still below 30% in low-income countries.
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