Biden and G7 nations offer funds for vax and medical product manufacturing

Amidst recently broader vaccine manufacturing initiatives from the EU and European companies, the G7 summit in the mountains of Bavaria has brought about some positive news for closing vaccine and medical product manufacturing gaps around the globe.

According to a statement from the White House, the G7 leaders have formally launched the partnership for global infrastructure, PGII. The effort will aim to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to deliver infrastructure projects in several sectors including the medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing space.

The US will look to mobilize $200 billion for PGII over the next five years through grants, federal financing, and private sector investments. Alongside the other G7 nations, a total of $600 billion will mobilized by 2027 for a wide range of global infrastructure investments.

One of the initial projects includes the G7 members, the EU, multilateral organizations and the US International Development Finance Corporations (DFC) disbursing a $3.3 million technical assistance grant to Institut Pasteur de Dakar (IPD) in Senegal.

The funds will be used to develop an industrial-scale flexible multi-vaccine manufacturing facility. The facility will have the potential to produce millions of doses of vaccines for Covid-19 and other diseases, with the potential to use both viral vector and mRNA technologies.

This comes at a time when Africa is becoming more of a focus for vaccine manufacturing.

On Thursday, BioNTech kicked off construction work for an mRNA manufacturing facility in Kigali, Rwanda. According to BioNTech, the facility — dubbed the African modular mRNA manufacturing facility — has a target for the first set of manufacturing tools to be delivered to the site by the end of this year.

The Serum Institute, in May, also said it is considering establishing its first manufacturing plant in Africa as part of a further step toward global expansion after successfully mass producing and selling hundreds of millions of Covid-19 vaccine doses out of its India-based facilities.

This also comes on the heels of the EU launching a new initiative for vaccines and medicines manufacturing in Latin America and the Caribbean to get drugs to the region faster. Endpoints News