Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire says the country is making frantic efforts towards beginning the production of vaccines.
The Minister revealed this while addressing State House Correspondents on decisions reached at this week’s cabinet meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Ehanire said two memos were approved for the upscaling the capacity of the National Agency for Drugs Administration and Control NAFDAC, leading to World Health Organisation’s certification that would grant Nigeria the right to produce vaccines locally.
“For the Health Sector, we presented two memos today, both of them were in relation to NAFDAC the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control. Both memos are procurement memos to upgrade and scale up the capacity of NAFDAC to be able to detect fake and substandard drugs and other materials. NAFDAC, as you know, is responsible for regulating medicines, drugs, cosmetics, and other products made in Nigeria or important.
“The first memo was about 40 through-scam-devices, which are like mobile scan devices to be able to recognise fake and substandard drugs brought in either across the border or found within the country.
“These are like rapid diagnostic test kits, which also relieve the laboratories because normally you have to take samples to the laboratories, it takes a long time, several days and lead to some delays. So, having a through scan allows us to have faster access.
“The second memo is about laboratory strengthening, improving and upgrading all of our six laboratories for NAFDAC for testing materials that are brought into the country.
“Both of these contribute strongly to what we call the bench benchmarks for NAFDAC to be able to allow the manufacture of vaccines in Nigeria. It needs what we call the maturity level 3 of the World Health Organisation, to be able to start manufacturing, we have ambitions to start manufacturing vaccines and the federal government owns 49% of shares in the company called BioVaccines that hopes to use technology imported from outside to make vaccines and getting this benchmark maturity level 3 is a condition for it.”
COVID-19 Vaccines
The Health Minister used the occasion to announce that the first batch of COVID-19 vaccines would arrive in Nigeria by the end of this month or early next month, adding that the delivery of the vaccines is not in the hands of the Nigerian government.
He however reiterated that Nigeria is expecting the COVID-19 vaccines from three donor sources, which should satisfy the need of the country without having to procure.
Ehanire affirmed that the country is expecting its supplies from COVAX facilitated by the World Health Organization (WHO); the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) and African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) set up by the African Union.
This is apart from individuals, government and organizations who are on their own making vaccine donations to the country.
Ehanire added: “Now, you can see that all of these are coming from various sources but put together, they almost satisfy our needs so that we don’t really need to go procure. But the question is, when are they delivering that is not in our hands. It is the hand of the person who is bringing it to us.
“We have been told to open an account with Afreximbank under the African Union, we have done that already successfully because we are going to pay for that part of the vaccine. The COVAX vaccine is free, at no cost to us, it is made from donations.”
He said Nigeria intends to immunize about 60-70 percent of the country’s population when the vaccines arrive.
“We want to immunise about 60 to 70% of our population. If COVAX immunises 20, then we have about 40 to 50 to immunise within the next two years. So, we have to pay for that minus any donations. For example, all those ones reduce the quantities that we have to purchase or any other that in future are given to us free of charge.
“Now, the COVAX will start delivering to African countries before the end of February. That’s what they told us. But they didn’t tell us which country is first or which is second, which is third. So, COVAX begins to deliver before the end of February. And we hope that before the end of this month, it would be our turn or latest by beginning of next month.
“As for us here, we are ready to use vaccination once it arrives, we met all the conditions. They have asked us to sign an indemnification form, we have done that. Indemnification means that you do not hold us responsible for anything that happens from using this vaccine. That’s a standard process. We’ve signed that indemnification and so we are waiting for the vaccines to arrive anytime.
“I don’t think that they will arrive in all African countries at the same time. They arrive one by one stage by stage or the order in which they arrive is determined by COVAX, who is the entity deleting this vaccine.”
On why Nigeria is using AstraZeneca vaccine after a fellow African country turned it down, the Minister said:
“Now the largest number of vaccines we are getting is AstraZeneca in Africa, and this AstraZeneca is made under the licence. It’s a UK vaccine but is manufactured under licence by the Serum Institute of India. So, Serum Institute of India is donating all these vaccines.
“The South African variant of the virus is not in Nigeria; the AstraZeneca vaccine can provide immunity to citizens. South Africa discovered that this vaccine had some weaknesses against their own variant, the South African virus variant. It’s a peculiar variant by itself and the South Africans say that it didn’t seem to be very effective against their own variant.
“Now, we turn to the World Health Organisation and say what do we do? They say, well, if you don’t have that variant, don’t worry, use it. In Nigeria, we do not have the South African variant. So, we will use it, it will be effective.
“So therefore, we are using it because it we do not have the South African virus variant here in our country. And if you start the vaccination on time and get Nigerians immunised, then they are immune and even if the variant comes in later on, it probably will not have any effect,” he explained.
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