Money is only the first step

Africa News of Sunday February 7, 2021

Source: theconversation.com

02/07/2021

How do you see the federal government’s decision to donate 10 billion naira to support the local production of COVID-19 vaccines?

I think the allocation of funds to start local vaccine production is a step in the right direction, but I doubt the amount is sufficient. The reason is that Nigeria does not have a functioning vaccine production facility. The only human vaccine production laboratory is in Yaba, Lagos, but it has not been functional for many years.

It will take a lot of money to reorganize it and increase its production capacity. It will also need to be staffed with people with the expertise and experience required in modern technologies for the production of safer and more effective vaccines such as recombinant DNA technology. So, in addition to the N10 billion, the government should do much more to start local vaccine production.

Where is Nigeria in vaccine production?

Well, it’s a mixture of what I’ll call the good and the bad. I’ll start with good. Nigeria has set up a laboratory for the production of animal vaccines. The National Veterinary Research Institute in Vom, Plateau State, produces vaccines for the livestock industry.

It manufactures a number of vaccines for the local market and for export to other countries in the West African sub-region. It produces viral and bacterial vaccines against several diseases of livestock, including cattle, sheep, goats and chickens.

The down side of the story is that, to my knowledge, human vaccine production is non-existent in Nigeria at the moment. The last time a human vaccine was produced at the Federal Vaccine Production Laboratory was in 1991.

There have been recent attempts to revive this facility. The former health minister made efforts three years ago to revive it.

Unfortunately, this effort did not yield the expected results. Nigeria has virologists, molecular biologists, and infectious disease genomics experts trying to produce vaccines locally, but it is individual efforts using grants that cannot support such an endeavor.

Why has the production of veterinary vaccines in Nigeria been successful?

What lessons can be learned to start the production of human vaccines?

Success depends primarily on the leadership of an institution. Although the National Veterinary Research Institute has seen its fair share of difficult times in the past, over the past two decades it has had visionary leaders who have done their best with the meager resources at their disposal.

The production of vaccines requires a major investment in the power supply to preserve cells and cell lines, stocks of viral and bacterial seeds and the reagents necessary for the production and operation of the equipment. The management of the institute has done a lot in this direction. The leadership of the institute has also focused on capacity building by encouraging staff to pursue master’s and doctoral studies.

The development of infrastructure has also invested a lot, in particular the purchase of equipment. For example, the institute recently commissioned a level 3 biosafety laboratory to work with highly pathogenic organisms which appears to be the only one in the country.

But I believe that much remains to be done to modernize operations and improve the production capacity of the institute.

Why are grants not suitable for investing in vaccine production?

Most grants are for fixed periods of time – they have an expiration date. Thus, any vaccine production facility created with grants as the sole source of funding will die of natural causes.

Once the funding window ends and there is no other livelihood, the facility will become moribund and all initial efforts will be in vain. Therefore there should be some level of government support to ensure the continuity and sustainability of the project.

In addition to funding, what public policy interventions are needed to revive

Vaccine production in Nigeria?

I believe that sustainable financing remains the main public policy intervention to reorganize Nigeria’s vaccine production capacity. There should be annual budget allocations to this sector; the government must see it as a priority.

We cannot afford to say hello to him or else we will be caught napping, as we are experiencing with this COVID-19 outbreak. Besides funding, I think government should also work with universities by harnessing the knowledge and expertise of researchers working in relevant fields.