South Africa is set to start the production of vaccines to fight future pandemics.
This was revealed by the President of South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa in a recent post he made on social media.
The post he made reads;
“Scientists from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, working with other laboratories, were at the forefront of the genomic surveillance work that has led to the identification of new COVID-19 variants.
Several South African scientists and researchers at a number of world-class institutions have been involved in the management of vaccine trials in the country.
Biovac, a partnership between government and the private sector, is using its vaccine storage and distribution infrastructure and capabilities to assist with the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine to different vaccination centres.
These capabilities did not come about by chance. They have been developed over many years, mostly funded with public resources, working together with development partners locally and internationally.
Taken together, our national science and innovation system is a hugely valuable resource that we need to further nurture and develop. We must support commercialisation of its products for domestic use and export, creating factories and manufacturing jobs.
I have asked the Minister of Higher Education and Innovation to put together a team of scientists to begin the process of developing our own vaccines to deal with this and future pandemics.
We now live in an era where we pandemics may become more frequent and we must therefore be self-reliant in relation to diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines. We must develop the scientific capabilities that our country has demonstrated to prepare for the future.”
Source: ghgossip.com
