Meningitis: Nigeria to Commence Local Vaccine Production
Nigeria has concluded steps to start local production of vaccine for immunising children against preventable diseases like Cerebro Spinal Meningitis among others.
The Federal Government in collaboration with the May &Baker said they took the step to end reliance on importation of some the vaccines and inaugurated the Biovaccines committee for commencement of quality local vaccine production.
Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole, while inaugurating the Committee in Abuja, noted that Biovaccines was a public private partnership between the Federal Government of Nigeria and a leading pharmaceutical company in the country, May and Baker Nigeria Plc.
Adewole in a statement made available yesterday, said the move became imperative after an outbreak of Meningitis C, which killed many children in 2017 due to lack of emergency health preparedness and reliance on importation of vaccines that were not readily available.
He commended the drug manufacturing company for its effort to make the plan work.
He said: "I have no doubt that the board will deliver and make Nigeria proud. We have chosen a board that has no excuse to fail, the board has to deliver because Nigerians and the media are critical.
“We have learnt from the mistakes of the past, the name of May and Baker would be written in gold if the project succeeds.”
Also speaking, the Managing Director, May &Baker, Pharm. Nnamdi Okafor said, it took over 10 years to arrive at the agreement.
Okafor stressed that “the organisation has successfully engaged stakeholder groups to realise their plans and activities to the task of providing Nigeria, a sustainable programme of immunisation through local production of vaccines.”
In the same vein, the Chairman of the local vaccine production committee, Prof. Oyewale Tomori, assured Nigerians of the best products.
According to Tomori, Nigeria will now be able to “produce those common vaccines from 2021 and beyond other vaccines that were necessary would also be out in board for administration for administration to Nigerians.“