Siemans SA Announces Partnership With Aspen To Boost The Vaccine Production For Africa
Siemans SA Announces Partnership With Aspen To Boost The Vaccine Production For Africa. Siemans SA has announced its partnership with Aspen to boost the production of the Covid 19 vaccine for Africa. This is a strategic partnership that will enable Aspen Pharmacare to increase production capacity to meet the rising demands for COVID-19 vaccines in Africa.
According to Siemans SA, the project aims to strengthen the global competitiveness of the South African pharmaceutical industry and improve the continent’s resilience against other diseases and future pandemics. Against this background, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has commissioned DEG to finance the establishment of home-grown vaccine manufacturing capacities. South Africa is the most advanced pharmaceutical market on the continent with Aspen being Africa’s leading pharmaceutical manufacturer.
Aspen is in the process of licensing the rights for the first African COVID vaccines, which it will launch as Aspenovax during the early parts of quarter 2. Stephen Saad, Aspen Group Chief Executive said in a statement, “We are pleased to be able to partner with Siemens for additional digital technologies that will further complement our existing high-technology, state-of-the-art pharmaceutical equipment and systems used to manufacture advanced sterile medicines, including vaccines for the continent. Aspen has invested in excess of R3.0 billion at our Gqeberha-based flagship sterile manufacturing site in the Eastern Cape, the single largest investment in the pharmaceutical industry in South Africa.”
With this partnership the companies seek to make sure that the African continent gets sufficient vaccines so that they can curb the Covid 19 pandemic. “Africa has remained vaccine constrained, importing some 99% of its vaccine requirements and the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the continent’s inequitable access to vaccines globally. Aspen has manufactured over 100 million doses of the Janssen COVID-vaccine and, in November 2021, we secured a non-binding agreement to manufacture and sell Aspenovax, Aspen’s own brand of the vaccine in Africa thereby providing a COVID-19 vaccine made in Africa for Africa,” added Saad.
