Speech for the Minister of Health at the launch of Biovac and Pfizer Partnership for the local manufacture of Prevenar in South Africa, Biovac Institute, Pinelands, Cape Town
Programme Director.
The CEO of Biovac Dr Morena Makhoana
The Minister of Science and Technology, Ms Naledi Pandor
The US Ambassador, Mr Patrick Gaspard
THE Country Manager for Pfizer, South Africa, Ms Jennifer Power Members of the Media
Distinguished guests
Good Morning
I would like to take the opportunity to thank my cabinet colleague Minister Pandor for inviting me to this special occasion. Vaccines are very important for the health of South Africans to prevent vaccine preventable diseases. Hence we are proud of our relationship with Biovac. As you may know the Department of Health has a long relationship with Biovac through a supply agreement that we have with Biovac. Biovac procures and supplies all vaccines to the Department of Health.
I last visited Biovac in 2012 when they had just completed constructing their first manufacturing facility and I a m very impressed with the developments since my last visit. This includes the investment by the Italian government in the development of Boivac's manufacturing capacity.
I believe that today's event celebrates the fact that prevenar vaccine will be manufactured in the second newest facility globally and it gives me great pleasure to be here for this occasion where we are launching the partnership of manufacturing a very important vaccine not only in South Africa but regionally and globally.
I would firstly like to state the importance of vaccines against pneumococcal diseases from the healthcare perspective. In 2005 the World health Organisation predicted that 1.6million people died of pneumonia every year. About 1 million of these deaths were children under the age of 5 years, most of who lived in the developing world.
Before conjugate vaccines were developed the world did not have effective vaccines for children under the age of two years. I wish to remind everyone that this is the most vulnerable population group. It is only once these vaccines were developed and introduced that the fight against childhood pneumonia could be taken.
Once the vaccines were made available, South Africa, through the Department of Health was the first African country to introduce the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV} in April 2009.
This commitment we did out of our own budget mainly because of the need to reduce the cases of pneumonia amongst our children. I am happy to report to you that in 2009 the number of cases of children under 1 year of age with invasive pneumococcal disease reported by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) was 70 per 100 000 whereas in 2014 that figure was reduced by more than half to less than 30 per 100 000. This was mainly due to the decision made by the Department of Health to introduce the vaccine. This investment is clearly paying off.
It is precisely why when the Minister invited me to join her on this occasion that I was pleased to do so because the manufacture of the vaccines will close the circle of tackling the burden of pneumonia disease in the country. It was in South Africa where the major clinical trials of this vaccine were done, we were the first country in Africa to introduce the vaccine, our own NICO is one of the few centres in the world doing surveillance and tracing the impact of this vaccine in the population, therefore the missing link was the production of the vaccine on our own soil.
During the procurement of the vaccine, the department of health recognising the value of the vaccine, negotiated and ensured that more investment and direct foreign investment be done by Pfizer by ensuring that the vaccine is manufactured here.
It was clear to us that the manufacturing needed not only be packaging and labelling but we ensured that it incorporates the most complex side of manufacturing in the form of formulation of all 13 serotypes, the filling, labelling and packaging.
By having Biovac manufacture the vaccine locally, this will be transformative not only to Biovac but to the country by ensuring affordable, consistent and reliable supplies to the department whilst ensuring that Biovac gets to be up-skilled and the trade deficit gets reduced in time.
When we introduced pneumococcus vaccine we also introduced rotavirus vaccine to prevent diarrhea. As with pneumococcus vaccine, the NICO informs us that rotavirus vaccine has also made a significant impact on under 5 mortality in our country. With the drought and the shortage of water we can anticipate that the diarrheal rates may go up and therefore have to take further precautions to prevention avoidable mortality.
I would also like to use this occasion to talk more broadly about vaccine preventable disease and the importance of the Millennium Developing Goa ls especially goal number 4 of reducing maternal and childhood mortality. We in the department since the introduction of pneumococcal vaccine have introduced more vaccines namely the rotavirus vaccine and the human papilloma virus vaccine (HPV).
The rotavirus vaccine has seen diarrheal wards shut down in many of our hospitals due to the effectiveness of the vaccines and the recently introduced HPV vaccine is undergoing good introduction amongst school going learners. Other initiatives that the department has launched include MomConnect (where Ambassador Gaspard joined me in launching in Soshanguve in 2014), where we give educational messages to pregnant women and ensure that after they give birth that they are reminded to bring their babies for vaccination. All these initiatives will assist in achieving a healthier life for South Africa's children in the future through mainly the prevention of disease.
The manufacture of vaccines on the African continent is a much needed capability. Our gaps as a continent in this field was highlighted by the recent outbreak of Ebola. Not only are health systems weak but we have not been able to develop a vaccine against this disease, even though it has been identified for decades, mainly because vaccine manufacturing capability on the continent is sorely lacking. We hope that the launch of this initiative will see the likes of Biovac been able to respond to vaccine preventable diseases in time.
The launch of the local manufacture of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV vaccines) is a stepping stone to the ultimate dream of developing our own vaccines on the continent for the continent.
It is with all of this that I wish to express congratulations to Biovac and Pfizer on reaching this momentous milestone that will see this very important vaccine being produced for the first time on African soil.
I thank you for your attention!
