Museveni meets Sinovac vaccine manufacturers
President Museveni during a meeting with a team from the international vaccine/biotech company Sinovac. PHOTOS/ PPU
President Museveni has met with a team from the Chinese biopharmaceutical company, Sinovac, over plans to start manufacturing vaccines and drugs.
The visit by the team from Sinovac comes just two weeks after Dr Cedric Akwesigye, the head of Kampala-based Vaccine Access Initiative (VAI), revealed plans to work with the Chinese company for the same reasons.
Mr Museveni, in a tweet on Monday, said: “I received a team from the international vaccine/biotech company, Sinovac, through their Ugandan representative, Mr Philip Ruan. The company plans to work with the government to establish a vaccine and biotech centre in Uganda.”
“The vaccine and biotech centre will be for use by Uganda and East Africa at large. With this centre, we shall achieve vaccine security and independence for both Uganda and the region. I support this idea and welcome them,” he added.
Mr Akwesigye told this newspaper yesterday that the meeting with the President paves way for more serious work.
“Now they have already met the President, we are going to move to another stage. The factory will be in Ntinda, but we have many sites,” he said.
He said two weeks ago that “in the next six months, we will be launching a vaccine manufacturing plant”.
But the chairperson of National Drug Authority (NDA), Dr Medard Bitekyerezo, said the factory will be assessed by the authority before it is approved to start manufacturing drugs or vaccines.
The VAI is an initiative formed by the Ministry of Health and two private companies Microhaem, a local company, and America’s Imagine pharmaceuticals. Microhaem is the same company behind Test and Fly, a Covid-19 testing firm in the country.
A team from the international vaccine/biotech company Sinovac during a meeting with President Museveni
Background
This is not the first time the citizens are being promised a vaccine manufacturing drive. “This selfishness in the world [where countries are refusing to share vaccines] is bad but it is also good, it wakes up Africans... Our researchers are now entering stage 5 and by November 2021, they will be in stage 8. I can assure you that by the end of 2021, we shall no longer be waiting for outsiders to rescue us from mass deaths,” President Museveni said in June last year. But Uganda has not yet started manufacturing vaccines amid billions of shillings channelled to researchers for vaccine development.
Dr Jane Aceng, the Health minister, said two weeks ago that the vaccine manufacturing may delay . “The first vaccine manufactured in the country will depend on how fast we can have technology transfer and how fast the scientists can do their work,” she said.
