Biovac to make oral cholera vaccine
• Manufacturer signs licensing deal
State-backed vaccine manufacturer Biovac has signed a licensing and technology transfer agreement with the International Vaccine Initiative to manufacture an oral cholera vaccination, a move expected to boost its in-house capacity and bolster Africa’s health security.
State-backed vaccine manufacturer Biovac has signed a licensing and technology transfer agreement with the International Vaccine Initiative (IVI) to manufacture an oral cholera vaccination, a move expected to boost its in-house capacity and bolster Africa’s health security.
The deal with the South Korean nonprofit organisation comes as a surge in cholera outbreaks around the world has heightened awareness of a longstanding global constraint on the supply of vaccines.
Floods, earthquakes and wars disrupted safe water supplies and led to deadly cholera outbreaks in countries such as Nigeria, Malawi, Haiti, Syria and Pakistan. The shortage is so bad that the World Health Organization announced in October it would temporarily suspend the standard two-dose regimen for a single dose to enable more people to be vaccinated.
While Biovac’s cholera vaccines are not expected to bolster global supplies until late 2026, the deal is part of a response to the risks associated with Africa’s reliance on vaccine imports, sharply exposed during the coronavirus pandemic.
The continent’s lack of vaccine manufacturing capacity left its governments at the back of the queue when Covid-19 shots first became available.
Africa manufactures just 1% of the vaccines it needs.
The IVI deal is the latest in a string of announcements from Biovac, which attracted interest during the pandemic. It was established in 2003 to revive SA’s human vaccine manufacturing capacity, but limited funding meant progress had until recently been slow.
The pandemic saw Biovac contract with Pfizer to bottle as many as 100-million doses a year of its Covid-19 shot, and raise R2.3bn from a consortium of development finance institutions to expand output at its Cape Town facility more than ninefold to 1-billion doses a year. Before the pandemic, it was helping produce small volumes of childhood vaccine for Pfizer and Sanofi, and importing vaccines for SA’s routine childhood immunisation programme.
The deal with IVI is the first to include technology transfer for the manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients, said Biovac CEO Morena Makhoana. Until now, Biovac has only formulated and filled vaccines.
The organisation aims to have commercial doses ready for export by the end of 2026, with production of at least 30million doses a year, he said in an interview with Business Day. Makhoana declined to be drawn on the cholera vaccine’s price, but said it would be affordable.