Djibouti News Gazette

PRETORIA, Scientists in South Africa have made a copy of the Moderna Covid vaccine, a move which they say could help boost vaccination rates across Africa.

The continent currently has the lowest uptake of Covid shots in the world.

The company behind the new vaccine – Afrigen Biologics – says it hopes to start clinical trials in November.

Moderna previously said it would not enforce the patents on its vaccine, allowing scientists in Cape Town to make their own version of it.

The researchers were backed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Petro Terblanche, director of Afrigen Biologics, said they were starting small, but had ambitions to scale up quickly.

“We have used the sequence, which is the same sequence as the Moderna vaccine 1273,” she said.

“This is part of a global initiative to build capacity and capability in low and middle-income countries to become self-sufficient.”

The shot being copied is a messenger RNA vaccine made by US firm Moderna. Pfizer-BioNTech also made its vaccine using the same technology. They were some of the first Covid vaccines to be authorised for use around the world.

This type of vaccine teaches cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response inside our bodies, rather than putting a weakened or inactivated germ into the body.

The company’s chief scientist, Dr Caryn Fenner, called the achievement “really significant”.

“It puts the power in our hands to be able to produce our own vaccines for the future, to be ready for further pandemics, to produce clinical trial material on African soil and then to look at other diseases of relevance in Africa.”

Many of Africa’s countries have fully vaccinated less than 10% of their populations, compared to 60% in North America, 63% in Europe and 61% across Asia. Despite having one of the best rates on the continent, South Africa has only vaccinated 27% of its people.

It’s been reported that BioNTech – the company which partnered Pfizer in producing an mRNA vaccine – also has plans to open a vaccine manufacturing plant on the continent.

A number of other Covid-19 vaccine production facilities are in the pipeline in Africa, mainly focused on Russian and Chinese-made vaccines.

This could be a major breakthrough for the African continent.

The vast majority of mRNA vaccines have gone to wealthy countries and there have been sketchy plans to make these on African soil.

But because Moderna said it wouldn’t enforce the patent rights on its vaccine, scientists have been able to reverse engineer it via a special World Health Organization-funded hub in Cape Town.

Although the quantities made so far are small, it’s been developed more quickly than many expected.

If the scale-up goes well and the trials succeed, it could be the start of more equal access to these cutting-edge vaccines.

It will also be interesting to see how Moderna responds now that scientists have cracked the code of its vaccine.

The pharmaceutical industry in general has opposed a campaign to waive intellectual property rights on Covid vaccines, arguing they are too complex to be made independently and that it would stunt innovation in the private sector.

Campaigners point out huge amounts of public money were poured into many of the vaccine projects.

Source: Nam News Network

The COVID-19 pandemic could reverse decades of global progress in stamping out Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), UN agencies warn ahead of the International Day to eliminate the harmful practice.

International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM is a UN-sponsored annual awareness day that takes place on Feb. 6 as part of the UN’s efforts to eradicate female genital mutilation.

In his message for the International Day, UN Secretary-General António Guterres underscored that “this flagrant manifestation of gender inequality must be stopped”.

He urged people everywhere to join UN efforts to end FGM and uphold the human rights of all women and girls.

“With urgent investments and timely action, we can meet the Sustainable Development Goals target of eliminating female genital mutilation by 2030 and build a world that respects women’s integrity and autonomy,” he urged.

Shuttered schools, lockdowns and disruption to services that protect girls, have put millions worldwide at increased risk of being subjected to FGM.

This means an additional two million girls could be affected by 2030, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, resulting in a 33 per cent reduction in global efforts toward eradication.

“We are losing ground in the fight to end female genital mutilation, with dire consequences for millions of girls where the practice is most prevalent,” Nankali Maksud, UNICEF Senior Advisor, Prevention of Harmful Practices said.

“When girls are not able to access vital services, schools and community networks, their risk of female genital mutilation significantly increases – threatening their health, education and future.”

In marking the 2022 International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM, UN agencies are appealing for stronger action to uphold the human rights, health and integrity of women and girls.

At least 200 million across the world today have undergone FGM, which refers to all procedures that involve altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons.

FGM is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and age 15, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), and for a variety of cultural and social reasons which vary from region to region.

For example, in some communities it is considered a necessary part of raising a girl and preparing her for adulthood and marriage.  In others, FGM is associated with cultural ideals of femininity and modesty.

Girls who undergo FGM experience short-term complications such as severe pain, shock, excessive bleeding, infections and difficulty in passing urine.

There are also long-term impacts on their sexual and reproductive health, and on mental health.

FGM is a global problem, according to the UN.  Although primarily concentrated in 30 countries in Africa and the Middle East, it is also practiced in some countries in Asia and Latin America, and by immigrant populations in Western Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand.

In some countries it is still almost universal. UNICEF reports that roughly 90 per cent of girls in Djibouti, Guinea, Mali and Somalia are affected.

WHO has also pointed to an emerging alarming trend. Roughly one in four girls who have been subjected to FGM, or 52 million worldwide, were cut by health personnel, which is known as medicalisation.

UN agencies are working to eradicate FGM by 2030, as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework.

Since 2008, UNICEF and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) have led a joint programme that focuses on 17 countries in Africa and the Middle East, while also supporting regional and global initiatives.

Fourteen of these countries now have legal and policy frameworks banning FGM, with nearly 1,700 cases of legal enforcement and arrests.

Given the disruption caused by the pandemic, the joint programme has adapted interventions that ensure integration of FGM in humanitarian and post-crisis response.

The UN believes FGM can be eradicated in a generation, highlighting that progress is possible through ensuring girls have access to education, healthcare and employment.

Source: News Agency of Nigeria

WASHINGTON— US President Joe Biden has appointed the son of businessman and politician in Ghana, Paa Kwesi Nduom, to an enviable job.

Dr. Edjah Nduom will lead the fight against cancer in a “Cancer Moonshot Program,” a tweet accompanied with photos showing him with the US president said.

This appointment is in line with an honour bestowed on him.

“Dr. Edjah Nduom, son of businessman Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, has been honoured and appointed by US President Biden to lead the fight against cancer in a “Cancer Moonshot Program,” the tweet said.

In his address, Biden told Nduom how special he was to him.

“See that doctor on the end there. That’s the man who spent 18 months trying to save our son’s life. Doctor, I love you. The whole family loves you,” Biden said.

On Wednesday, Biden announced a relaunch of the “Cancer Moonshot” program started during the Obama administration.

It had a goal of ending a disease that kills more than 600,000 people a year in the US.

“We can end cancer as we know it. This is a presidential White House priority,” Biden is reported to have said.

Also, President Biden announced a campaign to get more people screened for cancer, noting that more than 9 million cancer screenings have been skipped during the COVID-19 pandemic.

An Associate Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine in the US, Nduom’s clinical specialty is the surgical management of brain and spinal cord tumors. He is particularly interested in the safe resection of malignant tumors located in eloquent areas of the brain, the brainstem, and spinal cord.

Nduom is a member of the Cancer Immunology Research Program at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. He holds numerous positions in national and international medical societies.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

South African pharmaceutical company Afrigen is the first on the continent to make an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine using Moderna’s publicly available data. The company hopes to start clinical trials of the vaccine in November.

Afrigen is one of the companies taking part in a World Health Organization-backed hub to develop vaccines for low- and middle-income countries. Afrigen Managing Director Petro Terblanche said the mRNA vaccine was made with the company’s own knowledge base, processes and people. She said there were no technology transfers from any third party.

“The latest development at the mRNA hub at Afrigen in Cape Town is that our scientists have used the sequence of the Moderna vaccine 1273 published by Stanford University in an open-source manner and formulated a drug product at laboratory scale. They are currently doing more batches and analytical tests to make sure that they have the quality in place. So this is the first lab scale full end-to-end vaccine candidate that has been developed,” she said.

Terblanche said the company did not need permission from Moderna because its vaccine is still in the research and development stage.

“The sequence is published in the first place, secondly we are operating in the R&D space,” she said. “We have full freedom to operate, an exemption under the Bolar Exemption in IP law. So up to phase 3 clinical trials we are completely legal, and we don’t need any permission. Once that product is commercialized and there are IP constraints, we need to get a voluntary license for that.”

Terblanche said they would be asking Moderna to voluntarily license the vaccine to them, as it will be mutually beneficial to the companies and to low- and middle-income countries that will use this technology.

She added that they were using the new vaccine as a test case for a second-generation vaccine that is in the design phase.

Moderna has not commented on Afrigen’s announcement, but it was widely reported late last year that the company had paused a patent dispute with the U.S. government over its coronavirus vaccine.

Moderna had been disputing claims that three U.S. government scientists were co-inventors. However, the company said it would not pursue the fight for now, as it did not want to take attention away from battling the pandemic.

Terblanche acknowledged support from scientists in other countries for Afrigen’s work.

“This is our learning case and we’re pleasantly surprised with the results, but the design of the new formulation is already happening with the scientists and with technical partners globally,” she said. “It’s not only us, it’s a fantastic partnership with scientists in the U.S. and in Europe.”

South Africa’s acting director general of the National Health Department, Dr. Nicholas Crisp, welcomed news of the mRNA vaccine development.

“We’re very pleased to note that they’ve been picking up speed very fast in their capabilities,” he said. “It’s very exciting, it’s very important for the country. It’s one of a number of facilities that we are busy working on as a country between the department of health and science and innovation and other partners. So very encouraging.”

The World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, said 11% of the African population is fully vaccinated, and 85% have not received a single dose. She added that 239,000 people in Africa have died due to the pandemic.

Source: Voice of America