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The WHO announced an initiative to transfer messenger RNA technology to six African countries, a project that seeks to alleviate the inequality in vaccination against Covid-19 that affects the continent. The objective is to be able to produce its own drugs without depending on foreign countries and pharmaceutical companies. However, the progress made in the first of these centers, in South Africa, promises a difficult path.
South Africa was the first, followed by Tunisia, Egypt, Senegal, Nigeria and Kenya. They are the countries designated by the World Health Organization (WHO) to receive the technology and knowledge to produce messenger RNA vaccines, the innovative technique used by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech in their drugs against Covid-19.
“Produce their own vaccines”, that is the objective of the WHO for these six countries whose companies and governments will receive help “to develop a training and production route plan based on their needs and capacities”, according to the organization’s director. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“More than 80% of the population in Africa have yet to receive their first dose. Much of this inequality is rooted in the fact that vaccine production is concentrated in a few rich countries,” he added.
The initiative was presented in the framework of the summit between the African Union and the European Union, which supported the project.
“I believe that this is not only a great step forward in the fight against the pandemic, but also a step forward in Africa’s strategic sovereignty in terms of vaccines. Today, only one percent of the vaccines distributed in Africa are produced on the continent,” explained Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission.
Messenger RNA technology may not only be key to vaccines against Covid-19, but it is also considered that it could be the answer for future treatment and prevention of diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV and even cancer.
A sufficient step to end vaccination inequality?
This technology transfer strategy agreed between the EU and the WHO seems to be an intermediate that would allow the African continent to access its own vaccines without having to press for the release of the intellectual property patents of pharmaceutical companies such as Moderna or Pfizer and BioNTech. The European Union, in fact, has not yet openly supported this release, mainly due to internal dissent: countries like France have already supported it, while Germany, the country that hosts BioNTech, opposes it.
That is why Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African president, spoke like this at the summit. “I come to an uncomfortable moment: the release of patents (…) Governments that are committed to access to vaccines, let me repeat it, governments that are really committed to everyone having access to vaccines should make sure that we approve the release of patents, instead of hiding behind intellectual property and the profits of the producers”.
The initiative to eliminate the intellectual property of drugs against Covid-19 is led by the governments of India and South Africa, both countries with sufficient capacity and technology to produce them. But the interest goes further and becomes a global interest: only 10% of the African population has received the full guideline and only a quarter of its health workers.
That is why they argue that this technology transfer might not be enough. Pharmaceutical companies do not have the capacity to produce vaccines for the entire world population and releasing patents is still the fastest way to expand drug production.
But the concern goes further, especially as a result of a new disagreement between Moderna and African humanitarian organizations: the first messenger RNA technology center supported by the WHO is already operating in South Africa, a center that has been able to reproduce a vaccine against the Covid-19 based on public information from Moderna and whose clinical trials could begin in November.
The drugmaker has rushed to apply for a patent in South Africa on its coronavirus vaccine, a move that has many fearing it is motivated to stop the country from developing its own product. Moderna denies this and assures that it remains firm in the commitment it expressed in 2020: not to enforce its patent rights for the duration of the pandemic.
Moderna’s statements have not reassured organizations such as Oxfam or Doctors Without Borders, who issued a joint statement asking the pharmaceutical company to withdraw its request for the patent and, on the contrary, to help the South African technology center in its development of a vaccine against Covid-19.
