Africa to produce and supply its own vaccines

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Africa will continue to build capacity for vaccine manufacturing. Egypt is leading the way by being one of the countries involved in the manufacturing of medicines.

Senior Executive Director of Aspen Pharmacare, Dr Stavros Nicolaou speaks to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) about the recently concluded vaccine conference held in Egypt.

“All countries on the continent collaborate and they aggregate their volumes so they get the economic scale and that allows them to negotiate with local manufacturers on the continent. It’s called the pull procurement mechanism. A lot of work still needs to be done. US-based PEPFAR, which is the single biggest procurer of antiretrovirals in the world, just made an announcement that they will procure 100 million dollars of ARVs annually from the continent to the appropriately accredited African producers. There are more exciting things happening with vaccine procurement on the continent.”

Africa grows capacity to make its own vaccines: