Gate’s grant to fund Syringe production 

The Gates Foundation is the latest international donor offering to address the looming shortage of syringes for Covid-19 vaccination in Africa.

This comes amid warning from the World Health Organization, WHO, that the shortage of crucial commodities such as ‘syringes’ was slowing the rollout of Covid-19 vaccination campaign in the continent.

Kenyan company Revital Healthcare is licensed to manufacture the syringes and will now benefit from a the $4m, (£2.9m) grant from the Gates Foundation.

The WHO and Unicef have predicted a shortfall of up to 2.2 billion syringes needed to administer the Covid-19 vaccines as well as other ‘routine immunisations’ in 2022.

The shortage is mainly for the ones needed for the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine.

Currently less than 10% of Africa’s population is fully vaccinated against coronavirus.

BBC /Shakirat Sadiq