President Paul Kagame has made a case for production of vaccines in the region saying that much more input is needed for Africa to defeat the Covid-19 pandemic. President Kagame was speaking at the virtual Global Health Summit, co-chaired by Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and President of the European Union Commission Ursula von der Leyen. Kagame said that ending Covid-19 will require expanded pathways to vaccine access for populations throughout the world. While the Covax facility along with the African Union Vaccine Acquisition Task Team and the Africa CDC have helped to distribute millions of vaccine doses to our continent much more is needed for Africa to defeat the pandemic. “In the context of developing hubs for manufacturing the vaccines in our continent, Rwanda is in advanced talks with private firms and multilateral agencies to build manufacturing capacity in our region for the raw materials to produce mRNA vaccines,” he said. Kagame also called for a solution on the issue of intellectual property of vaccines which could see countries across the world granted rights to produce vaccines of the various producers. “Much more important, is technology transfer, cooperation on regulatory quality, and training of African engineers and scientists,” he said. In readiness for when the intellectual property of vaccines, the Head of State noted that the African Union, we are also working to establish the African Medicines Agency (AMA), so that there are shared standards among our national regulators. In his remarks, he also pointed out the importance of health systems built around Universal Health Coverage which had been proven to be resilient during the pandemic as well as domestic health financing to avoid overdependence. Kagame is spearheading a call to action for domestic health financing among African Union member states especially in light of the Covid-19 pandemic to improve health outcomes and resilience.
