Up to $1 billion will be available to boost African vaccine manufacturing as part of a new scheme set up by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the global health organisation said yesterday.
The “African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator” aims to address the inequality in access to vaccines that plagued the continent during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as to use domestically-produced shots to tackle diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of African children every year, such as cholera and malaria.
The African Union (AU) has set a target for the African vaccine manufacturing industry to supply over 60 per cent of the total vaccine doses required on the continent by 2040, up from around 1pc now. A host of initiatives have been launched across the continent since Covid-19, but some have struggled amid high start-up costs, particularly as demand waned as the pandemic receded.
The funding for the accelerator comes from leftover money in the COVAX initiative, a scheme set up during the pandemic to help vaccines reach the world’s poorest countries. It has been approved by Gavi’s board after consultation with the AU, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and other partners. The scheme is due to launch in June 2024.
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