Corona pandemic in Africa: hope for vaccine “Made in Senegal”

The corona numbers are increasing rapidly in Africa. The WHO reports 43 percent more deaths within a week. At the same time, only a few people are vaccinated. Hopes now lie in Senegal.

The government’s warnings not to travel and to avoid crowds during the Feast of Sacrifice seem to have met with little approval. Senegal is therefore expecting a steep increase in corona infections after the festive season. Salif Ka is a teacher in the capital Dakar and is worried: “The situation is alarming,” says the 31-year-old, who is in the middle of the third wave.

But of the around 17 million citizens, only just under 700,000 have been vaccinated. As in almost all of Africa there is a lack of vaccines, the head of the national vaccination campaign, Ousseynou Badiane, is indignant in an interview with the ARD studio Nairobi. “If Africans are not adequately protected, the epicenter will shift from the industrialized countries to us. We have to prepare for this and expect great losses.”

Loss of human life, far beyond the 15,000 corona deaths that have so far been officially registered in Senegal. Hopes were now directed towards their own vaccine production: “I believe that if the production takes place decentrally in Africa, then the availability of the vaccine will improve.”

Support from Germany

And many more people could be protected than before, even outside of Senegal. The head of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, recently criticized the fact that production in only a few countries prevents a fair distribution of vaccine doses during the crisis. Amadou Alpha Sall is also firmly convinced of this. He has been head of the Pasteur Institute in Dakar for five years and hopes to be able to establish his own production of a corona vaccine there – a licensed product: “Access to vaccines is a problem. The fact that we can produce vaccine for Africa in Africa is a problem a key tool to end this pandemic. ”

In any case, that is the best option. “We have the experience, we have been manufacturing vaccines for 80 years. We also produce the vaccine against yellow fever, which meets the quality requirements of the World Health Organization and can be sold worldwide.”

Germany is supporting the project in Senegal with 20 million euros. A similar initiative in South Africa is to receive 50 million. There are still many problems to be solved, but Amadou Sall is confident that he will soon be able to deliver vaccine ampoules from the Pasteur Institute: “The speed is essential, we have to be able to deliver quickly. That is why we work with various partners, including Germany. We have a very good aggressive program launched to ensure we can deliver a Covid vaccine to Africa in 2022. ”

Race against time

Salif Ka, the teacher from Dakar, welcomes the initiative of the Pasteur Institute. That would be well received by the population, he says, above all the state could perhaps save money if it no longer had to buy its vaccination doses abroad.

But another question is more important for him: “Is production going fast enough when we look at the alarming situation with Covid-19? That is the question that Senegal is asking itself at the moment.” It is a race against time, not just for Senegal, but for the whole of Africa.