Health
Vaccine Manufacturing – Rwanda and Senegal ’ s Leadership for Africa ’ s Health Security and Dignity
Lionel Manzi
As Africa battles the Covid-19 pandemic , it is faced with two interrelated challenges it must confront : achieving health security and restoring the continent ’ s dignity . Major tragedies such as the Covid-19 pandemic tend to lay bare the shortcomings of the African continent . Moreover , the tragedies also conceal the inequities on which the current world order thrives , despite pervasive public pronouncements from western capitals that claim to advance the cause of human rights . Fortunately , this time around African leaders seem determined to prevent the recurrence of the situation that led to the deaths of tens of millions of Africans due to the continent ’ s inability to produce Antiretroviral drugs for HIV / AIDS in the previous major pandemic . Senegal and Rwanda ’ s partnership with the German-based pharmaceutical giant , BioNTech , which aims to make mRNA vaccine manufacturing in Africa a reality , is a step in the right direction and an indication that with the right leadership and values , health security and dignity are within reach .
Obviously , there is something fundamentally wrong with the fact that “ We Africans import 99 per cent of our vaccines , produce 1 per cent of the vaccines that we consume , and consume 25 per cent of the world ’ s vaccines ,” as Dr John N . Nkengasong , Africa CDC Director , noted in an interview with The Pan-African Review . This level of dependency can only lead us from one preventable catastrophe to another without the appropriate tools to break the vicious circle .
Similarly , there is something fundamentally wrong about the world we live in if you consider that a group of countries ( the “ human rights ” champions ) colluded to hoard life-saving items – stocking up more than they need while denying others the opportunity to buy by slapping export restrictions on them – and ,
07