WHO Deputy Director-General's speech – Partnering to build sustainable Health Eco-System in Africa, African-European Collaboration

Mr Blum,

Excellencies,

Dear colleagues,

Let me start by echoing the WHO Director-General and thanking the Cercle Diplomatique for organizing this event in cooperation with Merck and the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations.

I agree with Dr Tedros that along with public partners, the private sector is essential to support innovations, scale them up and contribute to keeping the world safe.

I am therefore grateful for this opportunity to reflect with you and key partners on the EU-AU Summit on means to work together to build a sustainable health-ecosystem in Africa. A strong partnership in this will be essential! I look forward to discussing it during the panel.

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Learning from the current pandemic, the EU-AU Summit put high on the agenda of the Renewed EU-Africa partnership, the joint ambition to strengthen Africa's health sovereignty.

I welcome this objective.

COVID-19 has demonstrated that health is not a luxury - it is a human right; not a cost, but an investment in the foundation of social, economic and political stability and security. 

Central to achieving this health sovereignty is the development of a sustainable health eco-system in Africa in support of equitable and fair access to essential medicines, vaccines and other health products.

Over the past 2 years, we have witnessed amazing scientific and innovation breakthrough that led to the development and approval of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics in record time.

But this scientific triumph was - and is still - undermined by vast inequities in access to these life-saving tools.

Two years into the pandemic, 1.8 billion people in low- and low- and middle-income countries have yet to receive their first dose of vaccines. While new effective therapies are readily available in high-income countries, they are virtually inaccessible in low- and middle-income countries.

This is not only unacceptable in terms of human rights. This also goes against our efforts to bring this pandemic to an end and mitigate its social and economic impact. This is therefore not only a moral but also a strategic issue.

In our highly interconnected world, we can only defeat this virus if we defeat it together, everywhere.

To do this, all countries need to have access to the tools needed to fight this fight.

Through Team Europe, the EU and its Member States have played a vital role in addressing these inequalities through the ACT Accelerator.

Two years on, the unique partnership of governments, global health agencies, civil society and industry has delivered.

And our partnership on vaccines - COVAX - has enabled many countries to begin their COVID-19 vaccination campaigns and, as supply stabilizes, we are working closely with international partners to address delivery bottlenecks in some countries.

Likewise, we commend the African Union and its Member States for establishing the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust.

Yet, we all see that inequities in access to medicines and the ability to pay, for example, continue to plague Africa. More is needed to end this pandemic.

I encourage our private sector partners to consider Dr Tedros' call to commit to sharing 10% of their production with WHO and consider contributing to a Financial Intermediary Fund supporting faster and more equitable access to vaccines and other tools for low-income countries.

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At the same time, we must look forward and learn from the lessons the pandemic is teaching us, so we are better prepared for the next emergency.

One of the most obvious is the urgent need to increase local production of vaccines in all regions and in the case of today's discussion, in Africa.

That's why WHO and many partners have established a global technology transfer hub for mRNA vaccines in South Africa. This initiative aims to enable manufacturers from low- and middle-income countries to receive the training and licenses to produce their own vaccines.

In the margin of the EU-AU Summit, WHO announced the first six African countries that will receive technology from the technology transfer hub to produce their own mRNA vaccines: Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.

This initiative must be completed by efforts in creating an enabling environment for local manufacturing in Africa, tackling barriers on both supply and demand sides.

Improving local production and access to vaccines, medicines and health technologies in Africa is hampered by multifaceted barriers and needs.

However, let me reinforce Dr Tedros' messages regarding the four key barriers to enabling local production in LMICs, specifically in Africa.

They are:

1. Access to know-how: WHO is addressing this through technology transfer such as the mRNA training hub mentioned above, which provides necessary know-how to enable countries to rapidly-produce vaccines and biological products.
2. Workforce capacity: Acquiring know-how does not help if the workforce is unable to implement the know-how. This requires dedicated training, especially for biological products where LMICs lack critical capacity. WHO is addressing this, first through a biomanufacturing training hub in the Republic of Korea as well as plans for regional training centres.
3. Regulatory capacity: No point in producing products if the regulatory agency is unable to approve them and if the population does not trust the products. Therefore, WHO is working actively to strengthen regulatory agencies across Africa. WHO very much supports the recent developments on the establishment of the African Medicines Agency and we are happy to see positive movement with 47 national regulatory authorities in the region using the WHO global benchmarking tool to achieve a functional maturity level - we already have Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania as maturity level 3.
4. Commercial sustainability: Building facilities is easy but building sustainable facilities is more of a problem. All countries in the region need to work collaboratively together to develop a coherent plan for production and procurement. If big facilities are built, this requires significant capital and has significant maintenance costs, requiring access to a reliable market. Smaller facilities are cheaper to maintain but would have less impact in the event of another pandemic. Therefore, an equilibrium between these two scenarios needs to be found.

WHO and the European Union agreed in March to join forces and work with the African Union to address these barriers by advancing regulatory convergence, technology transfer, capacity building for local production and improving demand consolidation.

WHO is grateful to the EU for their commitment and support.

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We must however scale up our efforts.

The partnership between the EU and AU on Vaccine Manufacturing during the pandemic shows how, through the Africa-Europe partnership, political leaders and public and private partners can help move this important agenda focusing on the following needs.

First, we need end-to-end solutions addressing the full value chain from research and development, production, procurement, delivery and in-country use.

Such solutions must be integrated into the broader objective of strengthening health systems.

Supporting a radical reorientation of health systems towards primary health care, as the foundation of universal health coverage is a strategic objective for WHO.

It is also a core priority of the EU-WHO cooperation.

Through the UHC-Partnership, the EU and WHO work together in Africa and beyond in deploying experts in countries that assist national authorities to advance progress towards stronger health systems.

Such end-to-end solutions integrated into strong health systems will ensure that the introduction and use of new health products come together in a coherent way when deployed.

Secondly, this partnership must advocate for supporting African partners with the transfer of technology and for the scaling up production of quality assured and affordable vaccines and other health products.

Thirdly, no plan will succeed without the full ownership of African countries. We must therefore ensure that all objectives and plans are linked with national priorities and strategies and coherent with a regional approach.

This is essential to the ambition to ensure the sustainability of an improved health eco-system in Africa.

Finally, the EU-Africa partnership can ensure continued political attention and interest. This will be key for success. Not all projects that are essential for the health security of Africa will be viable, without sustained long term, high level political support.

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While other crises are emerging, now is not the time to lower our attention and commitment.

COVID-19 is still a threat affecting communities and there will be future threats, both pathological, but also environmental and food-related. This is why a One Health approach is so crucial.

Now is the time to act together and enable a sustainable health-ecosystem in Africa to ensure equitable and widespread access to the tools, medicines, capacities and financing to address current and future health challenges.

But now is also the time to confirm our commitment to Universal Health Coverage and to strengthen the resilience of health systems.

Getting back on track is key: this needs political commitment.

It is also something to look forward to and, together, I know we can do it!

I thank again the Diplomatic Circle of Geneva for bringing us together across sectors and look forward to our discussions.

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