Cape Town-based vaccine research group Biovac announced on Thursday that it had secured a technology transfer agreement with Indian firm Biological E to produce and distribute the company’s pneumonia vaccine across Africa.
The partnership positions Biovac to help accelerate the growth of commercially viable vaccine manufacturing within Africa, making the continent less reliant on imports, research and funding.
Africa produces only about 1% of its vaccines, with public health agency Africa CDC and the AU Commission committing in 2022 to push this share up to 60% by 2040.
The technology transfer, including regulatory approval, is expected to take three years, after which Biovac hopes to begin selling the vaccine to public-private health partnership Gavi, the vaccine alliance that supplies vaccines to half the world’s children.
According to Biovac, the vaccine in question has been earmarked as Gavi’s preferred option to source from and use in Africa. The vaccine, PCV14, is already licensed in India and is undergoing prequalification by the World Health Organisation.
The vaccine specifically protects against pneumococcal infections, which are the leading cause of pneumonia, bacterial meningitis and sepsis, and is estimated to have been responsible for the death of 1.6-million children worldwide in 2005.
Biovac CEO Morena Makhoana said the group had a long-standing relationship with the Indian company, having partnered on vaccines for tetanus toxoid, tetanus diphtheria and measles rubella previously.
“Now Biovac is happy to further strengthen its partnership with Biological E for a higher valency (wider coverage) pneumococcal vaccine, which has been identified as a need on the African continent,” said Makhoana.
Biological E MD Mahima Datla said the collaboration between the two companies would “contribute significantly to the improvement in global public health, capacity building of an African manufacturer, and most importantly impact children’s lives against pneumococcal diseases in Africa”.
“Biological E strongly supports Gavi’s vision and strategy for accelerating the expansion of commercially viable vaccine manufacturing in Africa and is committed to making locally manufactured contemporary vaccines accessible for the children of Africa,” said Datla.
Gavi CEO Sania Nishtar welcomed the technology transfer agreement, “both as a means of boosting further supply of PCV vaccines and as a solid step forward towards sustainable vaccine manufacturing on the continent of Africa”.
Business Day reported in April that the recent freeze in US aid, with a sharp reduction in European overseas assistance, had once again highlighted Africa’s lack of production capacity for vital medical supplies, an issue that shot to the fore during the Covid-19 pandemic when African nations were last in line for vaccines that were in short supply.
Vaccine independence is likely to be a topic of discussion at the SA-hosted G20 heads of state meeting in November.
In recent months, advocates of vaccine independence have called for the speeding up of existing plans to boost Africa’s pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity, leveraging the mandates of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to establish a continent-wide pooled procurement mechanism, and working on alternative financing models to counter the cuts to foreign aid.
With Tamar Khan
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