WHO chief praises South Africa's work to make COVID-19 vaccines
CTV
South Africa's efforts to produce vaccines are key to helping the African continent become more self-sufficient in inoculations to combat COVID-19 and many other diseases, the visiting chief of the World Health Organization said Friday.
On his visit to Cape Town, WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus is viewing three facilities that are starting work to manufacture vaccines.
Tedros visited the Biomedical Research Institute at the Tygerberg campus of Stellenbosch University on Friday. He is also scheduled to visit Afrigen Biologics & Vaccines and the Biovac laboratories in Cape Town.
The pandemic had shown the need for local production of vaccines in low and middle-income countries, he said addressing a press briefing on Friday.
"More than half of the world's population is now fully vaccinated, and yet 84% of the population of Africa is yet to receive a single dose," he said. "Much of this inequity has been driven by the fact that globally vaccine production is concentrated in a few, mostly high-income countries. One of the most obvious lessons of the pandemic, therefore, is the urgent need to increase local production of vaccines, especially in low and middle-income countries."
