The World Health Organization (WHO) is establishing a worldwide training center to assist developing nations in developing vaccines, antibodies, and cancer therapies using the same messenger RNA technology that was used to develop COVID-19 vaccines.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the new centre would be in South Korea and will share mRNA technology created by WHO and partners in South Africa, where scientists are attempting to reproduce the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Moderna Inc. during a news conference in Geneva on Wednesday.
That work is being carried out without the assistance of Moderna.
“Vaccines have helped to shift the path of the COVID-19 epidemic, but massive discrepancies in access to these life-saving tools have compromised this scientific success,”
Tedros added.
It’s the first time WHO has backed such unconventional attempts to reverse-engineer a commercially available vaccine, thus circumventing the pharmaceutical sector, which has largely favoured affluent countries above poor countries in both sales and manufacture.
With significant assistance from African and European partners, WHO announces the first technology recipients of the mRNA vaccine hub.
Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Tunisia will start producing mRNA vaccines.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, said today at the European Union-African Union conference in Brussels that the first six African nations will get the technology needed to make mRNA vaccines. Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Tunisia were among the countries that applied and were chosen as beneficiaries.
The announcement was made in the presence of President Macron, President Ramaphosa, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, and the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, at a ceremony hosted by the European Council, France, South Africa, and the World Health Organization.
The worldwide mRNA technology transfer hub was formed in 2021 to help low- and middle-income nations manufacture their own vaccines by guaranteeing that they have all of the essential operational procedures and know-how to manufacture mRNA vaccines at scale and to international standards.
The centre was first established to meet the COVID-19 emergency, but it has the ability to grow production capacity for other goods as well, putting nations in control of the vaccines and other items they require to address their health priorities.
WHO and partners will work with recipient countries to design a roadmap and provide the required training and assistance so that they may begin manufacturing vaccines as soon as feasible, depending on their infrastructure, workforce, clinical research, and regulatory capability.
“No previous incident like the COVID-19 pandemic has proved that relying on a few corporations to offer global public goods is restrictive, and risky,” stated WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The greatest method to solve health emergencies and achieve universal health coverage in the mid- to long-term is to considerably improve all areas’ ability to produce the health goods they require, with equal access as their primary aim.”
Edited by: Mahi Gupta
Published by: Vishakha Verma
