President Cyril Ramaphosa welcomed World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus to his official residence at Genadendal in Cape Town on Friday.
The visit focused specifically on the mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub and other vaccination initiatives, including the mRNA Hub at Afrigen, genomic sequencing at the Biomedical Research Institute and the fill-and-finish facility at Biovac.
A statement from the presidency said Ramaphosa welcomed this as “an opportunity to profile the depth of intellectual and technological capacity on the African continent, and the integrity with which intellectual property is being leveraged to enable vaccine production in Africa”. The issue of integrity with intellectual property is crucial as the damning report in the BMJ on BioNTech said the company tried to undermine the WHO effort by claiming that IP rights were being infringed.
According to the BMJ, which said it had confidential files in its possession, BioNTech was positioning itself for a windfall if shipping containers could come to Africa from Europe, exploit the regulations while in the area, then ship vaccines back to Europe.
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