The National Vaccine Institute (NVI), in partnership with PharmaVax Ghana, is equipping the laboratories of six institutions in the country to conduct intensive research into vaccine production.
The institutions include the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) and the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) at the University of Ghana, Legon.
The rest are the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) - Ho, the Centre for Plant Medicine Research (CPMR) - Mampong Akuapem and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research - Water Research Institute (CSIR-WRI).
The NVI has also secured about €1.9 million funding from Pharmavax Ghana to support innovative research and manufacturing collaborations.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the NVI, Dr Sodzi Sodzi-Tettey, who made this known in an interview with the Daily Graphic, said: “It should not be about universities working on their own and manufacturers on the other side. They should collaborate. So, where we have to work in an area, and we think there are universities that are already doing that, we partner with them.”
Africa CDC
According to him, the Africa CDC has set an agenda for Africa to produce "60 per cent of vaccines and pharmaceutical products consumed on the continent by 2040. So that is driving a lot of the manufacturing initiatives. Because it's all about vaccine sovereignty, self-sufficiency."
"We do not want to be at the mercy of other countries when there's an outbreak. Certainly, when there is an outbreak, every country will want to take care of their needs first, and this will leave us behind. We saw it very clearly during the COVID era," he said.
He said the NVI, established three years ago, had a well-defined mandate for vaccine production, as well as Research and Development (R&D), which is supposed to build capacities for the development of new vaccine candidates.
Dr Sodzi-Tettey said with funding from the government, the NVI and Noguchi had set up a research and application of messenger (mRNA) technology laboratory at Noguchi.
"We have taken five scientists to Belgium to be trained on how to use the mRNA technology equipment to conduct research, while some Europeans have also come in and worked with them on further training," he added.
"So, we are building the capacity that in any future pandemic, as far as mRNA technology is concerned, Ghana will have the ability to use it to generate new vaccines," he said.
Donor exit
By 2030, the NVI is supposed to be at the forefront of Ghana's vaccine self-sufficiency agenda, as the country will bear the full cost of vaccines it procures, which is currently supported by Gavi, which would have exited by then.
This year, the country has paid $25 million towards its annual budget as its counterpart funding to Gavi, and by 2030, it will need to raise almost $50 million to procure these vaccines without any support.
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