ACCRA, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- Ghana will speed up efforts to become self-sufficient in the supply of life-saving vaccines by 2030, President John Dramani Mahama has said.
The move is critical for Ghana to transition out from the global vaccine group Gavi by the year 2030, the president told a vaccine manufacturing investment forum in Accra, the national capital, on Wednesday.
The government will commit an additional 50 million U.S. dollars to the seed fund of the National Vaccine Institute, bringing the total seed fund to 75 million dollars, as an investment toward building and equipping vaccine manufacturing infrastructure in the country, Mahama said.
Ghana has learned important lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly regarding the fact that Africa received less than 1 percent of global vaccine production during that crisis, the president said.
"This was not just an oversight. It was a structural failure," Mahama said, noting that the situation makes the African Union's goal of domestic production of vaccines by 2040 a team initiative, which needs the scaling up of sovereign capacities and institutional networks.
He lauded a pledge by Afreximbank to invest 113 million dollars in two of Ghana's key vaccine manufacturing firms.
Ghana established the National Vaccine Institute in April 2023 to coordinate and supervise research, development, and manufacturing of vaccines and sera in Ghana. ■
