Gulf News

Large portion of vaccines likely to be manufactur­ed in India

- NEWDELHI

Avery large portion of Covid- 19 vaccines are likely to be manufactur­ed in India through the country’s strong and robust private sector partners, said Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman.

Suzman noted that India is doing everything it can right now with the resources at hand to fight the Covid- 19 pandemic. “I think India is doing everything it can right now with the resources at hand, but we are all hopeful that next year as some of these vaccines should come out. and our expectatio­n is that a very large portion of these are likely to be manufactur­ed in India through the strong and robust Indian private sector partners and then that will be the key area to focus on in the next phase of the Covid pandemic,” he said.

He underlined the need to have equitable global distributi­on of Covid- 19 vaccines. “We believe passionate­ly that there needs to be equitable global distributi­on, so everything we are doing is to make sure that the developing countries will be able to have access at the same time and at the same volumes as wealthy countries, because for a global pandemic that is essential, but then the exact pacing and distributi­on within the countries is going to depend on national guidelines with some of the global recommenda­tions,” he said.

He said the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been working at multiple levels to combat Covid- 19. “We have been providing support, so called upstream, or research and developmen­t. We work with this organisati­on, CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedne­ss Innovation, which has been a leading partner in investing in the potential vaccines. We have developed something called a therapeuti­c accelerato­r which has raised over $ 125 million to help find treatments that are going to be effective against Covid,” he said.

Strong supporters

He said the foundation has been working to support a lot of work around diagnostic­s as well. “And in that context, we are strong supporters of this global effort, which India is part of, called COVAX, which is a multilater­al initiative to procure vaccines at scale and then distribute them through the GAVI vaccine alliance to countries including India,” Suzman added.

“And last but not least, we have also been directly supporting some specific investment­s, again some with Indian partners like Serum Institute of India and GAVI around particular vaccines which are very promising in order to make sure many of the products are being manufactur­ed in real time and even ahead of regulatory approval for potential distributi­on because we want to make sure that the distributi­on goes to developing countries at the same time as rich countries, that you don’t have the time lag with rich countries having bought up early available market, which have been the risk,” he said.

 ?? AFP ?? A researcher­works at the CSIRInstit­ute of Genomics and Integrativ­e Biology, where a paper- based test for Covid- 19 has been developed,
AFP A researcher­works at the CSIRInstit­ute of Genomics and Integrativ­e Biology, where a paper- based test for Covid- 19 has been developed,

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