WHO and world leaders: How we’re building better, more equitable vaccine systems

We know the next pandemic outbreak is a question of when, not if. Time is of the essence to intensify collaboration and boost local manufacturing.

Inequity has plagued the responses to harmful pathogens. Take COVID-19: An unprecedented 12.45 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide in the last 18 months, helping many countries turn the tide on the pandemic. Yet three-quarters of people in Africa have not received one dose. As long as this gap exists, we can’t protect the world against new virus variants and end the acute stage of this pandemic.

Thanks to groundbreaking innovation, effective vaccines were developed in record time. However, at the outset, a concentration of vaccine and other health technology production was seen in a few, mostly rich, countries. Poorer nations ended up at the back of the queue. The situation has since changed, with global supply exceeding global demand.

The international community, led through the ACT-Accelerator and its COVAX facility, has played a crucial role, confirming that the response to scourges like COVID-19 requires ample preparedness and new ways of working in order to protect public health.

Now, the central challenges are how to ensure that vaccines remain effective, boost the capacities of national public health systems to administer doses and increase vaccine uptake, and counter the pervasive winds of misinformation that fan vaccine hesitancy.

COVID lesson: Boost local vaccine production                       

An obvious lesson of this pandemic is that we must expand the local and regional production of vaccines and other essential health products in low- and middle-income countries. This will allow for both direct access to vaccines as well as the development of local ecosystems of vaccine production. It will make supply in the event of the next crisis more reliable and more equitable, as long as global supply chains are not interrupted.

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The World Health Organization (WHO), the African Union, the European Union, the governments of South Africa, Rwanda, Senegal, Germany and France, and partners, are working to help industry and partners scale up local vaccine production and improve global and regional collaboration to prevent and respond to future pandemics. Investing collectively to ensure all regions of the world have state-of-the-art production infrastructure, trained personnel and institutional and regulatory arrangements is a valuable asset for our common health security.

WHO is supporting a multilateral effort to create and spread mRNA technology in developing countries.

A year ago, WHO, South Africa and the Medicines Patent Pool established a technology transfer hub for mRNA vaccines in Cape Town, supported by EU, France, Germany and other local and international partners. The hub’s goal is to spread this technology to developing countries by training and licensing manufacturers to produce their own vaccines for national and regional use.

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With donor support, the hub is already producing results:

►Scientists have designed a new mRNA vaccine based on publicly available information.

►Local manufacturers from Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe have been selected to receive the technology. Partners at the Medicines Patent Pool are ready to help license technologies.  

►A new initiative of the African Development Bank, the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, may also contribute.

►Parts of the private sector are also stepping up. The recent groundbreaking ceremony in Rwanda of the first mRNA production facility in Africa, built by the German company BioNTech, is another example of the efforts by African countries to work with partners to become more resilient in the face of pandemics. Similar facilities are planned in Senegal, collaborating with Ghana for fill-and-finish services.

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How to ensure vaccine adaptability 

The mRNA technology is not just for fighting COVID-19. We’re hopeful it can be adapted to tackle other diseases, such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and leishmaniasis, putting countries in the driver’s seat to produce the tools required to meet their health needs.