22, June 2021
WHO to establish first vaccine tech transfer hub in South Africa 0
South Africa will host the continent’s first Covid-19 vaccine production facility, as President Cyril Ramaphosa said Monday Africa now understood that doses would “never come” from elsewhere in time to save lives.
Ramaphosa joined the World Health Organization (WHO) and French President Emmanuel Macron in announcing the new hub for Messenger RNA coronavirus vaccine technology.
But as the project will take time to get off the ground, no vaccines are expected from it until next year.
At tech transfer hubs, the technology is established at industrial scale, while interested manufacturers can receive training and any necessary licences to the technology.
“The ability to manufacture vaccines, medicines and other health-related commodities will help to put Africa on a path to self-determination,” Ramaphosa told a WHO virtual press conference via video-link.
“It’s been shown now that we just cannot continue to rely on vaccines that are made outside of Africa because they never come. They never arrive on time and people continue to die.”
Hub seen as combating inequality
The hub is seen by the Geneva-based WHO as a way to combat the vast inequality in access to vaccines between the world’s wealthiest and poorest nations.
WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said it could take nine to 12 months before Covid-19 vaccines could be produced in South Africa using tested and approved processes.
Under the tech transfer hub system, the WHO and its partners bring in the production know-how, quality control and necessary licences to enable a rapid roll-out.
At the South African hub, the bio-pharmaceutical company Biovac will act as developer; the Afrigen biotechnology firm will be the manufacturer; and a consortium of universities will provide the scientific know-how.
Messenger RNA genetic technology — as used in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus jabs — trains the body to reproduce spike proteins similar to those found on the coronavirus. When exposed to the real virus later, the body recognises the spike proteins and is able to fight them off.
The WHO said it would “continue its assessment of potential mRNA technology donors and will launch subsequent calls for other technologies, such as viral vectors and proteins, in coming months”.
Kate Stegeman of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that “Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech must immediately share their mRNA technology with the hub so that many more mRNA vaccines can be produced independently by manufacturers in South Africa and more broadly on the African continent”.
‘Great day for Africa’
During a visit to South Africa last month, Macron said he was pushing for the faster transfer of technology to allow poorer countries to start manufacturing their own Covid-19 jabs.
It was a “great day for Africa,” said Macron.
“Each continent must be able to develop and produce its own vaccines, its own medicines,” he added.
“Action for global public goods is the fight that this century must uphold and the fight that cannot wait.”
South Africa accounts for more than 35 percent of Africa’s total recorded Covid-19 cases, and is currently suffering a third wave of infections.
South Africa, along with India, has been pushing for a temporary waiver of vaccines’ intellectual property rights in order to speed up production.
More than 2.6 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been injected in at least 216 territories around the world, according to an AFP count.
In the highest-income countries, accounting for 16 percent of the global population, 74 doses have been injected per 100 inhabitants.
Source: AFP



















23, June 2021
Former Mauritanian president Aziz in jail over corruption charges 0
Mauritania’s former president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, was on Tuesday jailed after a judge in charge of a corruption probe ordered his incarceration, his party and prosecutors said.
A prosecutor speaking on condition of anonymity and the spokesman of the former president’s party Djibril Ould Bilal confirmed his detention without citing the reason.
Aziz has twice gone before a magistrate investigating the case since the charges, including money laundering, were brought in March.
The move comes days after the former leader refused to continue reporting to police after being put under house arrest.
Aziz ruled the conservative West African state from 2008 to mid-2019, when he was succeeded by his former right-hand man and ex-defence minister, Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani.
The ex-president has said he is being persecuted in a bid to keep him out of politics, but has vowed he will not go into exile.
Aziz joined a small opposition party, Ribat National, in April in an attempt to salvage his political career after being expelled from the ruling Union for the Republic (UPR) party, which he had founded.
The 64-year-old former general who came to power in a coup already had to report to police three times a week and to seek approval before leaving the capital.
The charges followed a year-long probe initiated by parliament into the handling of oil revenue, the sale of state property, the winding up of a publicly owned food-supply company and the activities of a Chinese fishing firm.
A state prosecutor involved with the investigation in March said cash and assets worth the equivalent of about 96 million euros ($115 million) had been seized.
(AFP)