Africa Must Build Vaccine-Making Capacity, WTO Chief Says

July 26, 2021

World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala attends an interview with Reuters at the WTO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, April 12, 2021. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo

WTO Chief Says

African nations should build capacity to produce vaccines on the continent and work with pharmaceutical companies to ensure that the raw materials needed to produce the inoculations are available, according to World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

While a waiver on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, is seen as a way to improve the supply of Covid-19 vaccines to the world’s least inoculated continent, Okonjo-Iweala cautioned that only a handful of African countries have the capacity to produce the life-saving drugs

 

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