Nigeria should produce its own vaccines_ Deputy Health Minister
Nigeria’s junior Minister of Health, Dr. Olorunimbe Mamora has said that the most potent solution for Nigeria to avoid incidences of expired COVID-19 vaccines is to manufacture its own vaccines.
Mamora said this when he appeared as a guest on a talk show programme on Arise television, Thursday.
The Minister of Health Dr. Osagie Ehanire, Wednesday admitted that Nigeria had been forced to withdraw expired COVID-19 vaccines from circulation, adding that the doses will be destroyed by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration, NAFDAC.
The vaccines were said to have been donated by European countries through COVAX or the AVAT facility, but most of the doses arrived in Nigeria with four to six weeks left to their expiration dates and could not be dispensed on time, despite the efforts of the health authorities.
According to the minister, Nigeria has utilized over 10 million short-life doses of COVID-19 vaccines so far donated to the country in good time and saved more than $40 million in foreign exchange.
He said donations of surplus vaccines with expiring shelf lives to low and middle-income countries have been communicated and is a matter of international discussion.
Ehanire pointed out that developing countries like Nigeria accept them because they close critical vaccine supply gaps and save scarce foreign exchange procurement costs.
He said his ministry shares its experience with partners regularly and now politely declines all vaccine donations with short-shelf lives or those that cannot be delivered on time.
Mamora while complementing his principal comment said the reason for the expiration of the vaccines was not negligence on the part of the authorities and justified the acceptance of the vaccines on scarcity explaining that with the advent of Covid-19 there was global scrambling for vaccines and low and middle-income countries, including Nigeria, were the worst hit in terms of non-availability.
He said the problem is the ad hoc arrival of vaccines from donors which poses huge logistic problems. ” The manner in which these donated vaccines from our friends and partners come in is ad hoc. What we see is a situation where the arrival of these vaccines is not predicted and this naturally poses the challenge of planning in terms of logistics for deployment, coaching, readiness, distribution to the various States before getting to Nigerians.”
According to him, the most potent solution for the country to ensure access as well as procuring COVID-19 vaccines with longer shelf lives is for the country to manufacture its own vaccines and the other option is to have a predictable supply timeframe. ” let us anticipate these things months ahead so that we can plan for receiving and deployment,” explaining further that Lagos and Abuja are landing points and distribution to States could be a challenge if not planned ahead.
