Senegal and Rwanda have signed an agreement with German company BioNTech – one of the pioneers in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine – for the construction of the company’s first start-to-finish factories to make messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines in Africa, as first reported by the Associated Press (AP).
BioNTech, which developed the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, said that construction will start in mid-2022. The company is working with the Institut Pasteur in Dakar and the Rwandan Government.
Pfizer and BioNTech made global headlines during the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021 by being the first companies to develop a highly effective vaccine using revolutionary mRNA technology. Although the health crisis continues, large-scale vaccination campaigns have helped to dramatically decrease the number of deaths and hospitalizations. However, in sub-Saharan Africa, much of the population has not yet received the same access to life-saving vaccines, as is the case in the U.S., Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, which has caused concern among global health professionals.
The Washington Post notes that the novel mRNA process uses the genetic code for the spike protein of the Coronavirus and is thought to trigger a better immune response than traditional vaccines. Scientists hope the technology, which is easier to scale up than traditional vaccine methods, might ultimately be used to make vaccines against other diseases, including malaria.
“State-of-the-art facilities like this will be life savers and game changers for Africa and could lead to millions of cutting-edge vaccines being made for Africans, by Africans, in Africa,” said Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’ss Regional Director for Africa. “This is also crucial for transferring knowledge and know-how, bringing in new jobs and skills, and ultimately strengthening Africa’s health security.”
According to Ugur Sahin, co-founder and CEO of BioNTech, the company’s goal is “to develop vaccines in the African Union and to establish sustainable vaccine production capabilities to jointly improve medical care in Africa.”
