2023-12-18 18:27:47
Published on December 18, 2023
Lecture : 2 minutes.
The German laboratory BioNTech, which bought the Tunisian-British start-up InstaDeep last January, announced that it had reached a key stage in the creation in Rwanda of its first vaccine production center in Africa, aiming to to strenghten access to messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines on the continent.
He installed a production unit in the Rwandan capital Kigali to manufacture vaccines once morest various diseases in Africa. Made from containers shipping recycled, it extends over 35,000 square meters.
Its construction will be completed in 2024 and production should begin the following year, said the German biotechnology laboratory which, with the American Pfizer, had developed quickly and with success the world’s first approved Covid-19 vaccine, which generated billions of euros in revenue for both companies.
“Possible and necessary”
The project in Rwanda, worth $150 million, began in June last year and aims to not renew the situation of Africa’s total dependence on imported vaccines as during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“At the beginning, the consensus was that vaccines has mRNA might not even be administered in Africa. We said it was too complicated for our health systems,” declared Rwandan President Paul Kagame during a ceremony in the presence of the head of the Commission. European, Ursula von der Leyen. “When we embarked on this adventure to manufacture these vaccines on the continent, we were told that it would take at least 30 years. It was completely false. It’s possible et it’s necessary,” he added.
Around a hundred local employees
BioNTech plans to employ around 100 local employees when the factory is fully operational and train them to manufacture a host of new vaccines using mRNA technology. Rwanda distribute vaccines to the 55 members of the African Union.
The first anti-Covid vaccine factory on the African continent was launched last April in Cape Town, South Africa, spearheading the fight for equality access to anti-Covid vaccines, with the support of the World Health Organization (WHO), and supported by the South African biopharmaceutical company Biovac, the biotechnology company Afrigen and the South African Health Council. research medical.
(With AFP)
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