Will Africa’s access to COVID-19 vaccine be different?

THE World Health Organisation (WHO) recently noted that “researchers are working at breakneck speed” to understand SARSCoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

They are also working to develop potential vaccines, medicines and other technologies that are affordable and equitable. By June 2020 — six months since it was first identified — thousands of therapeutic trials and dozens of vaccine development studies were under way, including one vaccine study each in South Africa and Nigeria.

As a public health specialist and infectious diseases epidemiologist, I am very happy and impressed to see such massive research activity to relieve human suffering from this baffling disease.

But then, as an African, I ask myself, when will these treatments or vaccines be available for Africans on African soil? Will the “breakneck speed”, “affordability” and “equity” work for the benefit of Africa?

It is true that African countries are making their own efforts to fight the pandemic. For example, the Democratic Republic of Congo is building on its Ebola response to tackle COVID-19; Namibia is working hard on a “test-isolatetreat” strategy; and Nigeria is turning hospitals into COVID-19 treatment centres and calling on volunteer nurses to close the gap in health professionals.

WHO is also supporting the COVID-19 response in the African region, particularly in logistics and the capacity of health and multidisciplinary experts.

But the history of pandemic or epidemic diseases is not encouraging. It shows that treatments and vaccines have been accessible to African countries only after the loss of millions of lives and typically years — sometimes decades — after developed nations have benefited from them.

This is mainly because the treatments and vaccines for most diseases are produced in Western countries and are too expensive for African countries. This largely remains in place as the chief barrier to accessibility of treatments and vaccines.