Why doesn’t Africa have its own Covid-19 vaccine? – Quartz Africa

Since the first approval of a Covid-19 vaccine for use in China in June 2020, more than 526.8 million doses of different vaccines have been administered worldwide. But there is a striking divide between continents, with vaccination rates in Africa among the lowest in the world.

While the US has administered more than 136.7 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine as of the end of March, only about 23.6 million doses have been administered across the entire African continent by mid-month, according to the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

Some African countries were preparing to make Covid-19 vaccines approved for the continents as a way out of this quagmire. But a proposal to temporarily lift World Trade Organization rules protecting intellectual property, which would have allowed countries to more easily make vaccines domestically, was recently rejected by developed countries such as the United States, EU countries. , Canada and the United Kingdom.

African scientists believe that the Covid-19 vaccine access challenges experienced by African countries would have been avoided if a vaccine had been developed in Africa.

Africa did not invest in the development of the Covid19 vaccine when we could have produced a vaccine for the African population.

“In the process of this pandemic, did people make an effort to make vaccines in Africa? The reality is that they do, ”says Dr. Christian Happi, a molecular biologist and genomicist who heads the African Center of Excellence in Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID) in Nigeria. But were those vaccine candidates endorsed? The answer is no, ”says Happi. “Africa did not invest in the development of the Covid19 vaccine when we could have produced a vaccine for the African population.”

Medical scientists in Africa often scramble for funding, with the continent’s spending on research and development 0.5% of GDP below the world average of 2.2%. As a result, their health systems are too dependent on countries in other regions for new drugs and vaccines. Local pharmaceutical companies also focus on the manufacture of generic drugs. It usually takes many months, and sometimes several years, after a new drug or treatment is approved before it becomes available in Africa.

Development of the Covid-19 vaccine in Africa

After news broke early last year that a new coronavirus was spreading across the planet, more than 90 organizations around the world began developing and testing vaccines, resulting in the launch of a handful in a Record time. This was possible thanks to massive investment from the public and private sectors. The United States, for example, invested more than $ 10 billion in 2020 to advance vaccine development.

As of September, 321 vaccines were in development, with 33 in clinical trials, according to an analysis in Nature. About 40% of development has occurred in North America, compared to 30% in Asia and Australia and 26% in Europe. Africa has only a few projects.

It is not just a matter of wealth or ability. Middle-income countries like India, Cuba, India, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Thailand, and Iran have vaccines in human clinical trials. Why hasn’t the same happened in the middle-income countries of Africa: Nigeria, Morocco, South Africa, Egypt, Senegal?

Efforts have been made by African scientists, but they have failed to gain support from either the public or private sectors.

Last September, ACEGID led by Dr. Happi, which is a World Health Organization and Africa CDC laboratory for genomic research in Africa, announced that it was developing a Covid-19 vaccine with Professor Jonathan Heeney, his partner at the University of Cambridge.

The developmental vaccine was said to identify a neutralizing antibody that could kill up to 90% of viruses in a preclinical trial, according to Dr. Happi. Unfortunately, the lab has not been able to obtain funding or support to conduct clinical trials.

“I made a lot of efforts, I wrote a lot of proposals and we reached a lot of people, but it never paid off,” he said. The AU and CDC Africa are aware of the project, but people say they will do something about it and that’s the end. “Despite this, Happi has plans to continue his research.” I hope someday someone will see the value in it, probably not an African or African government, and invest in it and sell it to Africans. “

African governments prefer ready-made vaccines

Part of the reason for the lack of funding is that African countries chose to focus on ensuring delivery of already developed vaccines rather than creating their own. Led by the AU and Africa CDC, states responded to the pandemic as a common front, employing a strategy that allowed them to pool resources, including purchasing ready-to-use vaccines.

They were able to secure funding from Afreximbank, which is facilitating payments for Covid-19 vaccines by providing advance purchase commitment guarantees of up to $ 2 billion to manufacturers on behalf of AU member states. For comparison, the cost of vaccine development, from preclinical testing to human trials, ranges from $ 8 million to $ 350 million.

There is no report of such funding for the development of a Covid-19 vaccine in Africa (the African CDC and the AU did not respond to comments for this article). The UA’s current vaccine development and access strategy has been limited to supporting clinical trials and accelerating regulatory decisions for post-trial products, their implementation, and their acceptance. Until now, clinical trials of the Covid-19 vaccine conducted in Africa have been conducted through foreign organizations such as Novavax, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca.

“We have the human resources, we have the technical knowledge; we have the intellectual capacity, but we do not have the political will to mobilize the resources to make this happen ”. Dr. Happi said. He believes that the preference for buying imported vaccines rather than developing and producing them is a legacy of colonization. “For Africans, everything that comes from abroad is the best.”

The current research funding structure doesn’t help, says Gerald Mboowa, a bioinformatics researcher at Makerere University in Uganda and an infectious disease specialist.

“Many research facilities in Africa are funded primarily by Western countries and this means that most of the research agenda is dictated by these countries and not by African countries,” says Mboowa. “African researchers generate data for these funders which is then used to manufacture value-added innovations [and] products that are being sold again on the mainland. “

Mboowa explained that because African research is dictated by the Western agenda, local institutions will not be able to address local health and technology challenges. “African technological innovations are being undermined or discouraged while creating a market for Western-led innovations / products.”

Lack of political influence

This geographic imbalance in vaccine development has naturally manifested itself in an uneven distribution. Africa accounts for the lowest number of doses administered per 100 people (just 0.7 doses), compared to 5.0 doses in Asia, 8.0 doses in South America, 16 doses in Europe, and 27 in North America. At the current rate, the continent is expected to only reach herd immunity in 2023 at the earliest.

Efforts to vaccinate the world’s population have been clouded by “vaccine nationalism” and “vaccine apartheid,” where rich countries that develop and produce vaccines have prioritized their populations and been accused of undermine efforts being made to increase access for other countries.

That has left most African countries dependent on donations from countries like China and India, or the global vaccine swap deal COVAX, which has promised enough doses of vaccines to cover 20% of the country’s population for the purpose. 2021. The African Union announced in January that it has secured 270 million provisional Covid-19 vaccines for around 10-15% of the continent’s population. African governments are currently faced with the daunting challenges of figuring out how to fill the gaps.

African scientists have the knowledge and experience to deal with rapidly evolving infectious diseases and have made efforts to develop solutions such as the Covid-19 vaccine. Imagine what the fight against the pandemic would have been like if African governments were so nimble and funded a local vaccine instead of relying solely on vaccines manufactured elsewhere.

The successful development of Covid-19 vaccines in Africa would not only have given African countries more political leverage to access more vaccines. It would also have encouraged more investment in local innovations and products for other diseases and health challenges on the continent.

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