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THE World Health Organisation (WHO) announced today it will establish a global training centre to help poorer countries make vaccines, antibodies and cancer treatments.
Director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the hub would be in South Korea and would use messenger RNA technology being studied by scientists working for the WHO in South Africa, where it is trying to recreate the Moderna mRNA vaccine.
Moderna and fellow pharmaceutical giant Pfizer-Biontech, which also produces an mRNA vaccine, have refused the WHO’s request for access to their vaccine formulas. Moderna’s is believed to be easier to reconstruct.
Mr Tedros said: “Vaccines have helped to change the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, but this scientific triumph has been undermined by vast inequities in access to these life-saving tools.” It is the first time the WHO has tried to re-engineer commercially sold vaccines.
The WHO said the technology being hoarded would not just be useful for Covid vaccines but for making antibodies, insulin and various disease treatments, including for malaria.
