Kenya’s plan to produce human vaccines and diagnostics domestically is still coming together.

After meeting Director General Jerome Kim of the International Vaccines Institute (IVI) at Afya House, Health CS Susan Wafula made the announcement.

CEO of the Kenya Biovax Institute Michael Lusiola and Acting Director General for Health Patrick Amoth were also present at the meeting.

In order to produce Covid-19 vaccines and other vaccines, the government has invested between Sh1.5 and Sh2 billion in the Biovax project, according to Wafula.

The main item on the agenda was talking about how the IVI and Kenya’s Biovax Institute will collaborate to make sure Biovax’s mission is accomplished.

Research, partnerships in product development, and capacity building of the local workforce through technical assistance, training, and technology transfers were some of the areas that were investigated.

Kenya officially presented her letter of intent to join the International Vaccine Institute as a state party in Seul, South Korea in November 2022 months prior to the meeting.

President William Ruto and CS Wafula were present to see the letter being delivered by Foreign Affairs CS Alfred Mutua.

The Kenya Biovax Institute, a government-funded organisation tasked with producing specialised medical goods like vaccines and therapeutics, is about to begin production in earnest.

The first manufacturing facility in Africa to produce messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, such as Covid-19 shots, will be established in Kenya by the company Moderna.

The recent shortage of COVID-19 vaccines, which slowed ongoing mass vaccination drives, particularly across many African countries, prompted the decision to expedite the development of a human vaccine facility in the nation.

It is anticipated that the plant will be finished in 2024.

Once finished, the Kenyan manufacturing facility will be the first in Africa to manufacture messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, such as Covid-19 shots.

The company plans to invest up to Sh60 billion in the new facility, which will concentrate on producing drug substances for the continent of Africa. The facility may be expanded to include fill-finish and packaging capabilities.

During the past seven years, Villgro Africa has invested approximately $1.36 million (Sh171.4 million) in 36 Kenyan healthcare firms. As part of its regional growth, the company wants to open a Biotech Innovation Hub.The impact investor and incubator intend to make these initiatives public.

Since its inception, Villgro Africa has made it possible for those at the bottom of the pyramid to get healthcare. According to Wilfred Njagi, co-founder and CEO of Villgro Africa, the company has gradually invested seed money in social entrepreneurs that have domestic solutions to Africa’s healthcare and lifestyle problems over the past seven years.

These businesses have so far brought in about $5.2 million (Sh655.2 million) in revenue, produced 540 jobs, and affected more over two million lives.

According to the Impact Report, Villgro Africa committed $2.14 million (Sh269.6 million) in total investments over the past seven years, of which $1.36 million (Sh171 million) went to Kenyan entrepreneurs.

In order to accelerate the development of medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics for the control and eradication of diseases related to poverty, rare diseases, neglected tropical diseases, and NCDs, Njagi said.

According to Robert Karanja, co-founder of Villgro Africa and its chief innovation officer, there are numerous prospects for startups and investors in the local manufacturing of medical products.

Villgro Africa is aiming to build an incubator-fund platform in collaboration with Jaza Rift Fund with a goal fund size of $30 million (Sh3.8 billion) to help entrepreneurs who graduate from the incubator in order to make this a reality.

Drop Access, a company that creates mobile, solar-powered smart fridges that can be put on bikes to distribute vaccinations and other medical supplies, is one of the notable companies in which Villgro Africa has invested. Others include the home healthcare provider Bena Care and the innovative wound care and theatre textile manufacturing company Negus Med.

Rob Beyer, co-founder and executive chairman of Villgro, said, “As we celebrate seven years of growth and impact, we are grateful for a pipeline of quality firms, for funders who believe in the vision, for our board members and mentors who freely give of their time and expertise, and for our clients who entrust their plans to our team.

The African Development Fund (ADF) is receiving extra financing from the UK to aid the continent’s communities in developing their economies, generating jobs and enhancing healthcare.

On his first trip to Sub-Saharan Africa since becoming Foreign Secretary, the Foreign Secretary will reaffirm the funding in Kenya as a crucial tenet of the UK’s honest, dependable investment offer.

In a $9 billion overall foreign financing package for the ADF over the next three years, the UK will provide £650 million, giving African nations access to high-impact and affordable financing. Included in this are the £200 million dollars given to the ADF’s new Climate Action Window, which was unveiled during COP27.

With the UK financing, the continent will gain access to power for about 20 million people, better sanitation for over 30 million people, and the creation of over 2.3 million new employment. On the African continent, the fund provides assistance to 37 of the most fragile nations.

Foreign Secretary remarked Working with our friends and allies in Africa is something we appreciate greatly. We all gain from these kinds of connections. The UK provides trustworthy, ethical investment that does not add to debt burdens for nations but instead unleashes enormous potential for economic progress while enhancing global well-being and combating climate change.

The UK’s contribution to the African Development Bank demonstrates our dedication to the region over a lengthy period of time. When we travel together, we shall go far.

In order to assist the growth of the green economy and the creation of jobs throughout Africa, the African Guarantee Fund (AGF) and British International Investment (BII), a UK-based development finance institution, will sign a new risk-sharing agreement.

The arrangement would make $150 million in accessible financing available for small and medium-sized businesses, which is anticipated to enable up to 17,300 loans for companies across Africa. 25% of the loans will be underwritten by BII and 25% by AGF.

The Rwandan government and the American robotics and logistics company Zipline have partnered to establish new distribution facilities in both urban and rural areas of the nation.

For the first time, a government and Zipline are collaborating to offer a national drone service.

By 2029, the collaboration will enable Rwanda to make close to 2 million same-day deliveries and fly more than 200 million autonomous kilometres.

The country will employ Zipline to bolster its healthcare supply chain, fight malnutrition, and help its ecotourism economy, according to Rwanda Development Board CEO Clare Akamanzi.

It will ship food, medication, medical equipment, and animal health goods to Rwanda.

The first location of Zipline’s operations was Rwanda.

In order to develop a commercial drone delivery service for Rwanda in 2016, Zipline teamed up with the government of that nation. Zipline’s drones are being used to send blood products to 20 hospitals and health facilities across the country.

It is already in use in Ghana, the US, Nigeria, and Japan, and it will soon be available in Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire as well.

In the previous year, the company increased both the amount of deliveries and its operational reach.

The Didida project, which stands for Digital Innovations and Diagnostics for Infectious Diseases in Africa, unites 14 partners from eight nations: Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, the UK, France, the Netherlands, and Italy.

It is supported by money of €2 million (£1.75 million) from the UK Research and Innovation fund and €6 million (£5.2 million) from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme.

The project’s goal is to establish a graduate programme in Sub-Saharan Africa with a cohort of 16 PhD students from various fields, such as social science, healthcare economics, and digital technologies. This new generation of researchers will be given the resources they need by cohort events to help advance the fight against illnesses in Africa.

The students will be a part of a team that develops solutions to enhance patients’ access to healthcare in underserved rural areas with limited resources by utilising mobile diagnostics and digital medicine.

The Didida team will improve diagnostic tools for infectious diseases in rural regions over the following five years, drawing on prior research and development collaborations spearheaded by the university’s James Watt School of Engineering.

With assistance from local researchers and the government, Glasgow researchers have already created prototypes of the system to diagnose diseases like malaria and schistosomiasis and field-tested them in Uganda.

By offering a straightforward, affordable mobile autonomous diagnostic tool that can diagnose various illnesses, including malaria, in a single session, Didida will build on that research and enable better patient care.

With the help of Professor Frances Mair of the University of Glasgow’s School of Health & Wellbeing, who has expertise in the use of digital wearables for monitoring co-morbidities, it will also relate these disorders to non-communicable diseases like diabetes or hypertension.

It will be possible to access top-notch diagnostic assays in places with limited health infrastructure by connecting the test to mobile phones.

Health professionals will have access to the gathered data to directly recommend treatments to patients, and they will also gain from regional data to help local decision-making. Each technology is built on open-source, transparent, and simple-to-deploy solutions, like m-Health for the mobile data application and the DHIS2 health data infrastructure that is already in place.

The project will capitalise on Sub-Saharan Africa’s advantages in mobile payment and health services, which reach millions of people. Didida will rely on the expertise of reputable operators to carry out the project’s digital component.

In order to gather and process test data in Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda, the consortium intends to put into place the first platforms within the continent’s health infrastructures.

In November, 2022 in Abidjan, the Board of Directors of the African Development Fund, the organisation that handles the African Development Bank Group’s (www.AfDB.org) concessional loans, approved a grant of $6.63 million to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) for the development of the pharmaceutical industry in the sub-region.

The project is institutional assistance for the growth of the region’s pharmaceutical industry, and it will be carried out over a three-year period (2023–2025). The capacity of pharmaceutical regulatory organisations, product quality control and management systems, and research and development organisations will be strengthened in particular. The goal is to produce and market safe, high-quality pharmaceuticals for Covid-19 and other illnesses.

The sub-regional body will benefit from the project’s assistance in implementing continental strategies on pharmaceutical production, as well as in streamlining and harmonising the processes for registering new drugs. It will also ensure that essential medical supplies and technologies are available. Additionally, a portal for information will be developed for pharmaceutical makers, importers, and exporters.

Public organisations that are directly involved in the development of the pharmaceutical business, such as national drug regulatory agencies, quality control labs, local training programmes for pharmacists, universities and research facilities, will gain directly from the project.

According to Leila Mokaddem, director general of the African Development Bank for Southern Africa, “the goal is to empower them to help the pharmaceutical sector so that they can make safe vital medicines locally for the needs of the population, especially women and children.”

Burundi, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are among the 21 nations that make up the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa.

At the USAID “Democracy Delivers” event held in conjunction with the UN General Assembly, the government of Tanzania, Vodafone Foundation, and USAID pledged to develop a maternal health emergency transportation system that now ensures hospital transportation for thousands of Tanzanian women. Samia Suluhu Hassan, the president of Tanzania, requested a cooperation to extend this initiative across the entire nation. In response, USAID and the Vodafone Foundation pledged $15 million, with $10 million coming from the Vodafone Foundation and $5 million from USAID. Vice President Philip Mpango, who was the government of Tanzania’s representative at the event, pledged to pay for all transportation expenses as well as to provide dispatch personnel right away.Through such initiatives, the program’s reach will be expanded from two districts, which are home to around 1 million people, to Tanzania’s 60 million inhabitants.

In to replicate this model in other sub-Saharan African countries with high rates of maternal mortality, Vodafone Foundation further pledged an additional $5 million, bringing its total investment to $15 million. To replicate Tanzania’s successes elsewhere, USAID will explore further into opportunities to collaborate with the Vodafone Foundation.

Vodafone Foundation and USAID developed a free ride-sharing programme for expectant mothers as part of a 2013-2020 maternal health programme in the Sengerema/Buchosa and Shinyanga districts. In accordance with the programme, a woman experiencing a maternal emergency dials a toll-free number, a health worker takes down her information, and a dispatcher uses that information to find the closest hospital and private taxi driver. The driver is paid when the patient is delivered to the health centre. The initiatives, which cost less than the cost of one ambulance and have transported more than 15,000 women and newborns to date, are now fully funded by the local governments in both pilot areas.

Joakim Reiter, Chief External and Corporate Affairs Officer at Vodafone and Trustee of a Vodafone Foundation, announced a commitment as part of a panel discussion on how businesses and foundations can work with developing democracies that was hosted by Administrator Power, who also announced USAID’s commitment.

The pharmaceutical industry is paying attention to Rwanda, which is quickly becoming a focal point of African attempts to improve regulatory harmonisation, increase access to and cost of medications, and develop a sustainable domestic pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturing industry.

The Rwandan government has a goal of developing their nation into a regional centre for the manufacture and delivery of vaccines and medications throughout the continent of Africa. It has carefully positioned Rwanda as a major player in the continent’s pharmaceutical and vaccine production technology in recent years.

In terms of developing its pharmaceutical industry, Rwanda has achieved considerable strides throughout time. The Rwanda Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was established by law in 2018. Its explicit mission is to safeguard public health by policing drugs for humans and animals, vaccinations, and medical equipment.

The foundation of the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation (APTF) in Rwanda was authorised by the African Development Bank in June 2022 with the goal of bolstering the continent’s pharmaceutical sector, as well as its industrial and healthcare facilities. The collaboration between Rwanda and numerous regulatory agencies from EU member states was also announced in June by the EU. Following this declaration, a groundbreaking ceremony for Kigali’s first mRNA vaccines facility, which is being developed by the German company BioNTech, took place.

The African Medicines Agency (AMA), which seeks to synchronise the regulatory frameworks for pharmaceutical products throughout Africa, received approval from the African Union’s Executive Council in July 2022 to set up its headquarters and secretariat in Rwanda.

In order to boost the workforce capability of Africa’s pharmaceutical business, Bloom Public Health, an African public health think tank organisation, is planning the development of the African Pharmaceutical Academy (APA) in Rwanda in July 2022.

The APTF, AMA, and APA will assist the regional pharmaceutical market on the continent and improve Africa’s pharma sector’s ability to compete internationally.

In order to increase the accessibility of medical oxygen in critical care units in Zanzibar, the World Health Organization in Tanzania supplied oxygen concentrators and related accessories. The oxygen concentrators and other supplies for the Public Health Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) were delivered by the Acting WHO Country Representative, Dr. Zabulon Yoti, to the Honourable Hassan Khamis Hafidh, Deputy Minister of Health for Zanzibar. The assistance, valued at more over TZS 184,000,000/- (USD 97,310.30), is intended to enhance EOC operations on the Island and oxygen delivery to intensive care units.

This donation is a continuation of WHO’s assistance to the health authorities in determining the nation’s needs for oxygen supply and formulating strategies to expand the availability of oxygen and medical devices related to oxygen.

The single oxygen production facility in Zanzibar, according to a WHO-supported national evaluation, needs repair in order to resume full production. Due to this constraint, hospitals in Zanzibar were forced to purchase medical oxygen at high cost from commercial sources. Zanzibar has subsequently been able to resume producing medical oxygen at its single facility at Mnazi Mmoja Hospital thanks to technical and financial support from WHO.

Dr. Yoti stated, “We are dedicated to working with the Government of Zanzibar to enhance various capacities required for greater access to high quality healthcare services and the capacity to foresee and address emergencies.

The World Health Organization was thanked for providing timely assistance to the Zanzibari people, and the Deputy Minister of Health promised them that the equipment and supplies would be used as intended after accepting the donation.

“Our partnership with WHO has been and continues to be crucial in the development of our health system. The technology we receive today will advance ongoing pandemic response activities, particularly in the areas of risk communication and community involvement, critical care for COVID-19 patients, and patient care. Zanzibar will be better able to fulfil its IHR duties with this timely support, according to Hon. Hafidh.

To improve access to and the quality of mother and fetus health assessments, Butterfly Network has given 500 of its Butterfly iQ+ ultrasound devices to medical professionals in Kenya.

The only hand-held, whole-body ultrasound probe in the world will be provided to 1,000 healthcare professionals—mostly midwives—in Sub-Saharan Africa as part of a $5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that was announced earlier this year.

Kenyatta University, another collaborator in the project together with the Global Ultrasound Institute and Jamf, hosted a ceremony. There, local expectant women who received their first ultrasound exams underwent on-site training using the solution.

Many people in the world do not have access to medical imaging equipment or training, which places restrictions on what can be done in terms of determining a patient’s health and risk as well as the risk to the community at large. We are altering that with Butterfly,” said Darius Shahida, chief strategy and business development officer at Butterfly Network.

The Global Ultrasound Institute will teach 50 practitioners in obstetric ultrasound, and by the end of the year, it will have trained 500. Through this, more than 50 facilities in underserved rural areas will gain access to ultrasound technology.

In order to protect patient privacy, Jamf’s software will secure the devices with permission and restriction settings, a quick login procedure, and express scan mode.

“It is essential for mother and the fetus health in Kenya to increase access to medical imaging technology. According to Dr. Kevin Bergman, co-founder and CEO of the Global Ultrasound Institute, “tailored training that hundreds of healthcare providers got through this deployment is equally as vital to extended access.

The remedy uses the first and only whole-body ultrasound-on-chip technology in the world, which can be used with Apple and Android smartphones and tablets to examine various body parts. It is also portable and run by hardware and software connected to the cloud through a mobile app.