{"id":45549,"date":"2022-03-29T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-29T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/president-kagame-visits-biontech-facility\/"},"modified":"2022-03-31T08:07:42","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T08:07:42","slug":"president-kagame-visits-biontech-facility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/president-kagame-visits-biontech-facility\/","title":{"rendered":"President Kagame visits BioNTech facility"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kagame toured the facility based in Germany on Tuesday 29th March 2022. <\/p>\n

Following the visit, Kagame revealed via Twitter handle that he had an opportunity to tour the facility, alongside \u015eahin and his wife Ozlem Tureci, the firm\u2019s founding couple.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had the great opportunity to visit with U\u011fur \u015eahin at BioNTech Group facility in Mainz, Germany. Impressive innovations in biotech HighLevelStuff. A very good person and couple he and Dr. \u00d6zlem T\u00fcreci are!\u201d he tweeted. <\/p>\n

\u015eahin who received Kagame founded BioNTech Group along with her wife, \u00d6zlem T\u00fcreci who is also part of board members and his former lecturer, Prof. Christoph Huber. <\/p>\n

BioNTech in collaboration with Pfizer, manufactured Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine which offers 95% protection. <\/p>\n

In February 2022, President Kagame attended high-level BioNTech Vaccine Equity for Africa meeting during which BioNTech Group\u2019s modular container prototype known as BioNTainers was unveiled.<\/p>\n

The prototype will be used to manufacture vaccines in African countries including Rwanda later this year.<\/p>\n

The Head of State attended the meeting in Germany along with Macky Sall, the President of Senegal, which has been also selected among first countries to host BioNTech\u2019s vaccine manufacturing plants on African continent.<\/p>\n

At the time, Kagame said that the modular production system is a breakthrough which puts vaccine manufacturing within the reach of countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cVaccine equity is not about what happened in the past. It is about the future. There could be another pandemic. But we will be faster and better prepared next time, because of this strong partnership between BioNTech and Africa,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

The President underscored that the choice to deploy the solution first in Africa \u2018is a strong signal that a system designed to succeed on our continent can help speed up the pace of innovation for all of us\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cA commitment of this scale from a major pharmaceutical company is something we have never seen in Africa, and we recognize its significance. Rwanda is firmly committed to this partnership and we will do our part to ensure its success and sustainability,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Africa uses 25% of vaccines manufactured every year. Of these, the continent only produces 1% and imports the remaining percentage. The figures evidence how the African continent lags behind in vaccine manufacturing.<\/p>\n

The issue exacerbated during COVID-19 pandemic where Africa was the last continent to receive vaccines as countries with manufacturing plants hoarded them.<\/p>\n

The situation awakened the continent to bridge the gap through strengthening its capacity to manufacture enough vaccines locally without heavily relying on imports.<\/p>\n

However, the continent needs partners to be able to access advanced technology deployed to manufacture vaccines.<\/p>\n

There has been a positive progress with the mRNA technology which can be deployed to produce multiple types of vaccines within a short timespan unlike the past when it would take up to five years.<\/p>\n

So far, BioNTech has taken bold strides to introduce the technology in Africa where it signed agreements with countries including Rwanda and Senegal to set up vaccine manufacturing plants.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{President Paul Kagame has visited BioNTech facility and held a meeting CEO U\u011fur \u015eahin where they discussed the upcoming groundbreaking for the BioNTainer modular system in Rwanda that will manufacture COVID-19 vaccines as well as malaria and TB vaccines currently under development, Rwanda\u2019s Presidency has revealed.}<\/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-45549","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\/45549","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=45549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45549"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=45549"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=45549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}