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There was a lot of excitement around the world this week when Pfizer announced that an interim analysis showed its vaccine candidate is 90% effective in protecting people from Covid-19.
The Pfizer / BioNTech candidate is one of the few currently in the last stage of human trials prior to approval. While the news has given hope that the current pandemic may soon end, there are concerns that the Pfizer vaccine may not be accessible in many parts of the world, including countries in Africa.
There have been previous concerns that many low-income countries may not be able to access successful vaccines due to multiple challenges starting with lack of funds. In recent months, rich countries have spent billions of dollars to accumulate and secure future supplies of vaccine candidates for their citizens, while low-income countries are being queued.
GAVI, the global vaccine alliance, has secured vaccine candidates alongside rich countries to make the vaccine equally accessible to low-income countries and cover 20% of their population. However, countries may be required to share some of the vaccine and delivery costs ranging from $ 1.60 to $ 2 per dose. But the economies of most African countries have been hit hard by the pandemic and may not be able to afford vaccine delivery.
However, Dr Nicaise Ndembi, Senior Scientific Advisor to Africa Centers for Disease Control (CDC), said that recently $ 5 billion was secured by the African Export-Import Bank to purchase Covid-19 vaccines with the hope. to cover an additional 40% of the population in Africa to achieve herd immunity on the continent.
Ndembi added that 1.3 billion to 1.4 billion doses of the vaccine will be needed to achieve herd immunity. “We need $ 12 billion to cover everything. We are now working to top up the remaining 7 billion dollars, so we can go and Africans will have their own mechanism to support the vaccination of at least 60% of the population. “
good job
It is now more widely recognized that African countries have largely handled the pandemic well by the bop executives of global health organizations and observers including Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Director for Africa and Sema Sgaier, the director of the Surgo Foundation, which produced a Covid-19 vulnerability index for each region.
So far in Africa, with a population of about 1.3 billion, just under 2 million cases of Covid-19 have been recorded and far fewer deaths (about 46,626) than in Europe (about 325,899) or North America (about 252,235). Scientists have attributed the lower death rate to Africa’s younger demographics and lower overall comorbidity.
But there are still concerns that several African countries are not testing enough people to be able to confidently say that the low case load numbers truly reflect the current situation. This is why the focus has been on the effectiveness and availability of potential Covid-19 vaccines as in the rest of the world.
There are also concerns that African countries do not have the capacity to produce the vaccines they need, and depending on the import, access to vaccines is not feasible, especially if cold storage is required. The continent’s vaccine manufacturing industry is nascent with potential Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing capacity in Tunisia, Ethiopia, Senegal, Egypt and South Africa.
This month, South African firm Aspen Pharmacare announced an agreement with US pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson to produce its Covid-19 vaccine candidate. In early July, Egypt announced an agreement with China to produce a Chinese Covid-19 vaccine.
While Dr. Ndembi says Africa CDC is working to see if vaccines can be produced in more African countries, a spokesperson for the Gates Foundation, an organization that has invested billions in vaccination in low-income countries, said “in countries that do not already have a track record of producing quality assured vaccines, local production of vaccines can be difficult and expensive in the short term and have a limited health impact. “
Stay calm
Poor vaccine cold chain system has been a common and major vaccination challenge in Africa. Most vaccines need to be stored at temperatures between 2 ° C and 8 ° C (36 ° F and 46 ° F) but in many parts of the continent the cold chain infrastructure is inadequate and electricity is often not available or reliable.
In addition to this challenge, some of the candidate Covid-19 vaccines under development require storage and transportation facilities capable of maintaining an extremely cold temperature: around -80 ° C (-112 ° F), colder than a normal freezer. , for the candidate Pfizer vaccine. There is the further logistical complication that Pfizer vaccine requires two doses taken two to three weeks apart to be fully effective.
The Gates foundation says these challenges are surmountable by claiming that it has awarded grants to organizations to help develop early stage vaccine candidates that could overcome some of the delivery challenges, “such as those requiring only one dose, have greater temperature stability or they are less expensive to produce. “
“Gavi has supported more than 495 vaccine introductions over the past two decades, including a successful effort to vaccinate over 300,000 people against Ebola with a new vaccine that needed to be stored at a temperature profile similar to that of some of the early vaccines. Covid-19 expected. “
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