The President reiterated the commitment yesterday as he participated in the meeting bringing together heads of state and Governments, as well as heads of different institutions and international organizations assessing how Arica can manufacture COVID-19 vaccines. <\/p>\n
The meeting held virtually was organized by African Union (AU) in collaboration with Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).<\/p>\n
In line with the agenda of increasing domestic health financing, Kagame highlighted that it is important for Africa to forge strategic public-private partnerships for vaccine manufacturing on our continent.<\/p>\n
\u201cVaccine production goes hand in hand with increased investments in domestic health systems, as well as building an efficient and autonomous Africa CDC, which I think is the way we are headed. Rwanda is ready to play a role in this effort, together with other member states and partners,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Kagame further stressed that Africa needs to expand production capacity for vaccines and other essential medical products.<\/p>\n
He said that he contacted and discussed with manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines who insisted that Africa can make it. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn the past few weeks and months, I had the opportunity to initiate contacts with different manufacturers of vaccines, specifically focusing on the Messenger RNA (mRNA) technique used by Moderna and Pfizer. We have been involved in discussions and I have briefed a few colleagues on our continent, but we want to take this forward by discussing it with others,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a company that is capable of this technique, just as Moderna and Pfizer have been doing, that is ready and willing. I will brief those responsible very soon. I am sorry that I have not done that before we had this discussion,\u201d added Kagame. <\/p>\n
The President stated that Africa can apply techniques of these manufacturers complementing with other ways like the adenovirus method, in the vaccines used by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd therefore, for Africa to move from being very sorry for ourselves, which is the case today \u2014 and I think no one single person takes the blame for that \u2014 but we have to take the blame for that, and move from what we know has not worked well for Africa to something we can do, using the examples President Ramaphosa mentioned, by partnering with these industries,\u201d he noted. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe African Continental Free Trade Area makes these investments even more attractive. The Africa Medicines Agency Treaty is a critical part of the institutional framework, and I urge African member states to ratify this, as many as we can have ratify, as soon as possible,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
The meeting was also attended by President of DRC Felix Tshisekedi who is the current Chairperson of AU and his counterpart of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{President Paul Kagame has said that Rwanda is ready to contribute to the program aimed at increasing investments in domestic health systems that could capacitate African continent to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines.} <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[72,75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-43289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-featured-news-home","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43289"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=43289"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=43289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}