New vaccine secrets platform

Kenya could benefit from a new voluntary platform, where vaccine makers share their secret ingredients.

The new platform replaces the pariah Health Technology Access Pool that was created during the Covid-19 pandemic.

C-TAP was meant to encourage vaccine makers to share their secret ingredients to increase access to vaccines and other tools used during the pandemic, especially in poor countries.

However, manufacturers shunned it and opted for huge profits. This partly created the skewed access during the pandemic.

World Health Organization, which launched C-Tap in 2020 alongside other partners, has now closed it.

WHO said that the system will now be replaced by one known as the Health Technology Access Pool.

HTAP will allow manufacturers to share their know-how in making various health products, WHO said in a statement.

This will help manufacturers in upcoming markets such as Kenya to learn how to make new products.

“Equitable access to essential health products is an essential part of universal health coverage and of global health security,” said WHO boss Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus.

“Building on what we have learned from C-TAP, the Health Technology Access Pool is an important step towards more equitable access to a broad range of health products through the sharing of intellectual property, knowledge and scientific innovation.”

WHO said despite the challenges C-TAP faced, it secured six global licences involving 15 technologies that span research and development tools, diagnostics and vaccines –  including the first from a private manufacturer.

That private manufacturer is Taiwan’s Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp, which shared the secret formula for its Covid-19 vaccine called MVC-Cov1901.

WHO said the new platform builds on the foundation laid by C-TAP while incorporating structural, process and other changes that will enable it to attract and support a diverse range of priority technologies more effectively. 

It suggested the new platform will promote access to products whose manufacturers have shared their formulae.

“This approach will amplify the public health value of HTAP investments as well as the attractiveness of licensed technologies to recipient manufacturers by realising greater market opportunities and financial sustainability,” WHO said.

The organisation said it will publish further details on how HTAP will operate and the technologies it will target. 

The official launch of HTAP is planned for the second quarter of 2024.  In the interim, WHO said it will work toward expanding regional or global production capacity of health products.

Health CS Susan Nakhumicha mid last year said at least 5,688 people in Kenya were killed by the disease since 2020.

Kenya achieved herd immunity for Covid-19 early in 2022, despite the low levels of vaccination, according to experts.

Herd immunity is achieved when more than 70 per cent of the population develops protection against the disease either through vaccination or infection.

This makes it difficult for the disease to spread anymore in the community.

Acting director general for Health Patrick Amoth and several other researchers said Kenya achieved herd immunity mainly through natural infections because few people are fully vaccinated against the disease.

“Despite vaccine inequity, hesitancy and refusal, herd immunity had been achieved in Kenya and likely other African countries by early 2022, with natural infections likely contributing to most of this immunity,” they said.

The other researchers are from the Kenya Medical Research Institute, Washington State University Kenya programme, US’s Emory University, KAVI-Institute for Clinical Research and Nairobi and Kakamega county governments.

Their findings were reported in the Vaccines journal last year, under the title 'Near-Complete SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence among Rural and Urban Kenyans despite Significant Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal.'