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Corona awareness-raising graffiti in Senegal: production network planned
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The pharmaceutical company Biontech plans to start building a production facility for mRNA vaccines in Africa in the middle of next year.
Initially, a production line with a capacity for around 50 million Covid 19 vaccine doses per year is planned, the company announced on Tuesday in Mainz.
A letter of intent has been signed with the Rwandan government and the Pasteur de Dakar Institute in Senegal.
Biontech has not yet given an exact location for the production facility.
Gradually, the production capacities are to be expanded and "further production lines and production facilities are to be added to the network on the continent," it said.
This will enable the production of hundreds of millions of mRNA-based vaccine doses in the future.
The Mainz vaccine manufacturer had already announced in August that it would evaluate the development of "sustainable production options for vaccines" in Rwanda and Senegal.
It should not only be about corona vaccines, but also mRNA-based malaria and tuberculosis vaccines.
"We will work together to build a regional production network to support access to vaccines produced in Africa for Africa," said Biontech co-founder Uğur Şahin on Tuesday.
The aim is to develop vaccines in the African Union and to build sustainable vaccine production capacities in order to improve medical care in Africa.
The planned production facility will initially be operated and staffed by Biontech in order to support the "safe and rapid start" of the production of corona vaccines.
In the long term, the production capacities and know-how are to be passed on to local partners.
"State-of-the-art facilities like these will be lifesaving and critical to Africa and could result in millions of vaccines for Africans being produced by Africans in Africa," said Matshidiso Moeti, regional director for Africa at the World Health Organization.
mik / AFP