As the world grapples with multiple climate-related disasters on different continents, a watchdog group in Washington is pressing the Biden administration to take more aggressive action to reduce emissions in the United States.

A report, issued by the liberal-leaning Revolving Door Project, outlines a wide number of actions that the group believes President Joe Biden can implement by executive action, meaning that he would not need to coax cooperation from U.S. lawmakers currently preoccupied with looming midterm elections.

Headlines this week underscore the challenges facing the planet. As the report was issued, Pakistan was suffering from catastrophic floods that have displaced tens of thousands and ravaged crops; a powerful typhoon recently dropped a meter of rain on South Korea; China is suffering its worst heat wave on record; and the western United States is gripped by a drought of historic severity.

The Environmental Protection Agency may seem like the most obvious focus of the report’s attention, and the list of steps that agency might take is indeed long. However, the report also homes in on actions available to many other federal agencies, such as the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense, that are not typically associated with climate change issues.

“Every part of the government should be thinking very much about how to consider climate in the work that they do — how to incorporate it into their existing mandates to protect their various domains, and to be thinking and acting very creatively and aggressively on this,” Max Moran, a research director at the Revolving Door Project and one of the report’s authors, told VOA.

EPA urged to act

The Environmental Protection Agency has the most expansive authority over climate-related issues in the federal government, but its enforcement capacity was significantly reduced during the Trump administration.

“The EPA can be one of the most powerful governmental actors in the United States when it is given the resources and direction to effectively implement its mandate,” the Revolving Door Project notes. “It has broad authority to police pollution and environmental degradation to minimize environmental destruction and public health impacts.”

The report urges the agency to be more aggressive in punishing corporations that violate environmental regulations, pointing out that penalties handed out by the agency often involve companies hiring their own auditors to assure future compliance or funding projects that have little to do with mitigating the damage they have caused.

As the agency works to reinvigorate its enforcement capacity, the report recommends multiple other ways in which it can step up its policing of rules regulating some of the most environmentally damaging emissions, including the powerful greenhouse gas methane.

Departments of Interior, Justice

The report notes a number of measures available to the Department of the Interior to reduce carbon emissions, one of the largest of which is capping abandoned oil and gas wells. Although old wells are not commercially viable, they still emit thousands of tons of methane into the environment every year, and capping them would greatly reduce the volume of gas that escapes.

In addition, the report calls on Interior to stop leasing federal land to energy companies for further development of fossil fuel extraction operations and to reform mining regulations to reduce damage to the environment from factors including the degradation of water sources and the runoff of dangerous chemicals.

The Department of Justice, the report argues, is insufficiently aggressive about prosecuting criminal violations of environmental laws.

“Environmental litigation is key to ensuring that companies and individuals comply with environmental laws,” it says. “Without the threat of litigation, the laws protecting ecosystems and public health are toothless.”

It notes that one government database identifies “thousands of facilities across the country with multiple significant violations” that have remained out of compliance for years without facing prosecution.

Administration shifts climate team

There is reason to believe the Biden administration is prepared to focus more on executive action than it has in the first year and a half of the president’s term. For most of that time, Biden was trying to negotiate with a balky Congress on major environmental legislation, and aggressive action by the executive branch might have made agreement more difficult to reach.

Now, however, with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which included the largest investment in green energy and other climate-conscious programs in history, the likelihood of further legislation is unlikely in the near term.

Last week, Biden announced that he has hired a veteran Washington insider, John Podesta, as a senior adviser in charge of rolling out the billions in tax incentives and other programs put in place by the IRA.

At the same time, Biden announced the promotion of Ali Zaidi to national climate adviser, to replace the departing Gina McCarthy. Zaidi is a veteran of the Obama administration where, for eight years, he served in a variety of posts related to climate policy.

In a statement announcing the nomination, Biden seemed to signal that more executive action is coming.

“The Inflation Reduction Act is the biggest step forward on clean energy and climate in history, and it paves the way for additional steps we will take to meet our clean energy and climate goals,” the president said.

While the IRA earned the support of some Republicans in Congress, there is significant resistance in the GOP to greater regulation in general, and greater environmental regulation in particular. If the Biden administration does become more assertive about environmental regulation, Republicans will have little recourse in the near term. However, they are likely to use the issue to try to drive turnout in both November’s midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election.
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Electronic cigarette maker Juul Labs has agreed to pay nearly $440 million to settle a two-year investigation by 33 U.S. states into the marketing of its high-nicotine vaping products, which have long been blamed for sparking a national surge in teen vaping.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong announced the deal Tuesday on behalf of the states plus Puerto Rico, which joined together in 2020 to probe Juul’s early promotions and claims about the benefits of its technology as a smoking alternative.

The settlement, which includes numerous restrictions on how Juul can market its products, resolves one of the biggest legal threats facing the beleaguered company, which still faces nine separate lawsuits from other states. Additionally, Juul faces hundreds of personal lawsuits brought on behalf of teenagers and others who say they became addicted to the company’s vaping products.

The states’ investigation found that Juul marketed its e-cigarettes to underage teens with launch parties, product giveaways and ads and social media posts using youthful models, according to a statement.

“We think that this will go a long way in stemming the flow of youth vaping,” Tong said at a news conference at his Hartford office.

“I’m under no illusions and cannot claim that it will stop youth vaping,” he said. “It continues to be an epidemic. It continues to be a huge problem. But we have essentially taken a big chunk out of what was once a market leader, and by their conduct, a major offender.”

The $438.5 million will be paid out over a period of six to 10 years. Tong said Connecticut’s payment of at least $16 million will go toward vaping prevention and education efforts. Juul previously settled lawsuits in Arizona, Louisiana, North Carolina and Washington.

The settlement total amounts to about 25% of Juul’s U.S. sales of $1.9 billion last year. Tong said it was an “agreement in principle,” meaning the states will be finalizing the settlement documents over the next several weeks.

Most of the limits imposed by Tuesday’s settlement won’t immediately affect Juul, which halted use of parties, giveaways and other promotions after coming under scrutiny several several years ago.

Teen use of e-cigarettes skyrocketed after Juul’s launch in 2015, leading the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to declare an “epidemic” of underage vaping among teenagers. Health experts said the unprecedented increase risked hooking a generation of young people on nicotine.

But since 2019 Juul has mostly been in retreat, dropping all U.S. advertising and pulling its fruit and candy flavors from store shelves.

The biggest blow came earlier this summer when the FDA moved to ban all Juul e-cigarettes from the market. Juul challenged that ruling in court, and the FDA has since reopened its scientific review of the company’s technology.

The FDA review is part of a sweeping effort by regulators to bring scrutiny to the multibillion-dollar vaping industry after years of delays. The agency has authorized a handful of e-cigarettes from Juul’s competitors for adult smokers looking for a less harmful alternative.

While Juul’s early marketing focused on young, urban consumers, the company has since shifted to pitching its product as an alternative nicotine source for older smokers.

“We remain focused on our future as we fulfill our mission to transition adult smokers away from cigarettes—the number one cause of preventable death—while combating underage use,” the company said in a statement.

Juul has agreed to refrain from a host of marketing practices as part of the settlement. They include not using cartoons, paying social media influencers, depicting people under 35, advertising on billboards and public transportation and placing ads in any outlets unless 85% of their audience are adults.

The deal also includes restrictions on where Juul products may be placed in stores, age verification on all sales and limits to online and retail sales.

“These are some of the toughest mandates at any point on any industry,” Tong said, “which is incredibly important because at the end of the day this is about protecting our kids and protecting all of us from a very significant public health risk.”

Juul initially sold its high-nicotine pods in flavors like mango, mint and creme. The products became a scourge in U.S. high schools, with students vaping in bathrooms and hallways between classes.

But recent federal survey data shows that teens have been shifting away from the company. Most teens now prefer disposable e-cigarettes, some of which continue to be sold in sweet, fruity flavors.

Overall, the survey showed a drop of nearly 40% in the teen vaping rate as many kids were forced to learn from home during the pandemic. Still, federal officials cautioned about interpreting the results given they were collected online for the first time, instead of in classrooms.
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Zimbabwe is struggling to contain a measles outbreak that has killed nearly 700 people, most of them children and young people.

Zimbabwe’s government said Tuesday thousands of people have been infected with measles since an April outbreak and 698 people have died, most of them children.

Zimbabwe’s health ministry blames some religious sects for the outbreak. It says some religious groups and traditional leaders preach against getting vaccinations.

Health authorities have since been struggling to contain the infectious viral disease, which causes a rash, cough, and high fever, and can be fatal for unvaccinated children.

“Measles is a very contagious, infectious disease that spreads when a number of unvaccinated children rises beyond critical thresholds,” said Alex Gasarira, the World Health Organization’s representative in Zimbabwe. “So, what we have in Zimbabwe right now is because the number of unvaccinated children has risen because of several factors: Community who are not comfortable to have their children vaccinated, disruption [of] vaccination services because of the recent COVID-19 pandemic.”

The rising death toll is fueling calls in Zimbabwe for mandatory shots to halt the virus, but experts says the effort has to be well organized.

“Compulsory immunization has to be well planned, and it has to cover every child in this country,” said Tinashe Mundawarara of the Zimbabwe Health Law and Policy Consortium. “That would ensure that the best interest of the child is really considered.”

Zimbabwe’s health authorities have not yet made the measles vaccination mandatory and were not immediately available for comment.

But they have been campaigning for all children between six and 15 years old to be immunized and are working with aid groups like the U.N. Children’s Fund, UNICEF, to educate those who resist.

UNICEF Zimbabwe’s Dr. Tajudeen Oyewale said his organization and others are working with the government to contain the outbreak.

“Just like [during] the COVID response, the government of Zimbabwe and partners are taking seriously the current outbreak of measles that we currently have in the country,” he said. “At present, the government has deployed rapid response team supported by UNICEF, WHO and other partners to help better track the incidents of measles. More importantly, UNICEF and our community actors are also working hand in hand to increase awareness of the measles vaccine and also help address community resistance to the vaccination.”

The measles outbreak was first reported in Zimbabwe’s Manicaland province, which borders Mozambique, and has since spread nationwide.
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The death toll from a measles outbreak in Zimbabwe has risen to almost 700 children, the country’s health ministry has said.

Some are calling for the enactment of legislation to make vaccination mandatory in a country where anti-modern medicine religious sects hold sway on large swathes of the population of 15 million people.

The southern African country’s health ministry announced at the weekend that 698 children have died from measles since the outbreak started in April.

The ministry said 37 of the deaths occurred on a single day on Sept. 1. The health ministry said it had recorded 6,291 cases by Sept. 4.

The latest figures are more than four times the number of deaths announced about two weeks ago when the ministry said 157 children, most of whom were unvaccinated due to their family’s religious beliefs, had succumbed to the disease.

Dr. Johannes Marisa, the president of the Medical and Dental Private Practitioners of Zimbabwe Association, told The Associated Press on Monday that the government should escalate an ongoing mass vaccination campaign and embark on awareness programs targeted especially at anti-vaccine religious groups.

“Because of the resistance, education may not be enough so the government should also consider using coercive measures to ensure that no one is allowed to refuse vaccination for their children,” said Marisa. He urged the government to “consider enacting legislation that makes vaccination against killer diseases such as measles mandatory.”

UNICEF on Monday said it “is deeply concerned” with the number of cases and deaths among children due to measles. The agency said it is assisting the government to combat the outbreak through immunization programs.

The measles outbreak was first reported in the eastern Manicaland province in early April and has since spread to all parts of the country.

Many of the deaths have been of children who were not vaccinated, Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said in August.

Zimbabwe’s Cabinet has invoked a law used to respond to disasters to deal with the outbreak.

The government has embarked on a mass vaccination campaign targeting children aged between 6 months and 15 years old and is engaging traditional and faith leaders to support the drive.

Zimbabwe continued vaccinating children against measles even during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, but the drive has been hampered by religious groups that preach against vaccines.

The Christian sects are against modern medicine and tell their members to rely on self-proclaimed prophets for healing.

Church gatherings that have resumed following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions have “led to the spread of measles to previously unaffected areas,” said the health ministry in a statement last week.

Measles is among the most infectious diseases in the world and mostly spreads in the air by coughing, sneezing or close contact.

Symptoms include coughing, fever and a skin rash, while the risk of severe measles or dying from complications is high among unvaccinated children.

Outbreaks in unvaccinated and malnourished populations have been known to kill thousands. Scientists estimate that more than 90% of the population needs to be immunized to prevent measles outbreaks.

The World Health Organization in April warned of an increase in measles in vulnerable countries as a result of a disruption of services due to COVID-19.

In July, the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, said about 25 million children worldwide have missed out on routine immunizations against common childhood diseases, calling it a “red alert” for child health.
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Argentine health officials said Saturday that four people in a clinic in northwestern Tucuman province had died of Legionnaires’ disease, a relatively rare bacterial infection of the lungs.

Health Minister Carla Vizzotti told reporters that Legionnaires’ had been identified as the underlying cause of double pneumonia in the four, who had suffered high fevers, body aches and trouble breathing.

The deaths, all since Monday, occurred in a single clinic in the city of San Miguel de Tucuman.

The latest, on Saturday morning, was that of a 48-year-old man with underlying health problems. A 70-year-old woman who had undergone surgery in the clinic was also a victim.

Seven other symptomatic cases have been identified, all from the same establishment and nearly all involving clinic personnel, provincial officials said.

Of those seven, “four remain hospitalized, three of them under respiratory assistance, and three are under home surveillance, with less complicated clinical symptoms,” said provincial health minister Luis Medina Ruiz on Saturday.

The disease, which first appeared at a 1976 meeting of the American Legion veterans group in the U.S. city of Philadelphia, has been linked to contaminated water or unclean air-conditioning systems.

When the outbreak in Tucuman was first detected, doctors tested the afflicted for COVID-19, flu and hantavirus, but ruled all of them out.

Samples were then sent to the prestigious Malbran Institute in Buenos Aires. Tests there pointed to Legionnaires’.

Vizzotti said authorities are working to ensure the clinic is safe for patients and staff.

Hector Sale, president of the Tucuman provincial medical college, earlier this week described the bacterial infection as “aggressive.”

But he added that it is not normally transmitted person-to-person, and that no close contact of any of the 11 infected people showed symptoms. 
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The U.K. will begin its autumn COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the coming weeks after authorizing booster shots made by Pfizer and Moderna that have been modified to target both the original virus and the widely circulating omicron variant.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said Saturday that it had approved the Pfizer vaccine for use in people aged 12 and older after finding it was both safe and effective. The agency authorized the Moderna vaccine last month.

The government will offer the vaccine to everyone age 50 and over, as well as front-line health care workers and other groups considered to be particularly at risk of serious illness as the National Health Service prepares for a surge in infections this winter.

“These innovative vaccines will broaden immunity and strengthen our defenses against what remains a life-threatening virus,” Health Secretary Steve Barclay said in a statement. “If eligible, please come forward for a booster jab as soon as you are contacted by the NHS.”

Previous COVID-19 vaccines targeted the initial strain, even as mutants emerged. In the new “bivalent” boosters, half of the shot targets the original vaccine and half offers protection against the newest omicron variants.
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A protest by a group of HIV-positive people in New Delhi, demanding a regular supply of life-saving antiretroviral therapy drugs across the country, ended this week, after 42 days, as the government has reportedly resumed the interrupted supply of the drugs. 

Around 2.3 million people are infected with HIV in India. Since 2004, the government has been providing free antiviral therapy, known as ART, to HIV-positive people in India.  The therapy stops replication of the virus, helping patients live longer and cutting the risk of transmission of the virus to others. Around 1.5 million HIV patients depend on the free government-supplied ART drugs.

The demonstration, at the central office of the Health Ministry’s National AIDS Control Organization, or NACO, which manages HIV and AIDS prevention and control programs in India, began in July, after activists claimed the supply of the drugs became irregular, with many medicines no longer available in centers. The activists said many HIV-positive people were only getting drugs for three, four, or five days and others were not getting the drugs at all. 

HIV activist Hari Shankar, a leader of the Delhi protest, said this week after withdrawing from the protest that the authorities had resumed the supply of ART drugs to each patient for a month, after a gap of three or four months.

“Our network informed us this week that the ART centers across the country have begun handing out at least one month’s supply of drugs to each patient. They have fulfilled our main demand,” Shankar, a member of the HIV/AIDS activist group Delhi Network of Positive People, or DNP Plus, told VOA Thursday.

In an emailed statement, the health ministry told the VOA last month that there was “no stock-out of drugs” and there were “no instances of disruptions or non-availability of treatment services or ARV medicines at the national and state levels.”

Over 90% of HIV-positive people receiving ART cannot afford to buy the drugs from the market and they were suffering badly because of the crisis of the supply from the ART centers, the activists said during the protest. They also expressed concerns that the drug crisis could lead to many patients becoming fatally ill. 

Many HIV-positive people have expressed relief after the NACO resumed its regular supply of ART drugs this week. 

“During the crisis, in July and August, I took my daily ART doses after buying the drugs with money borrowed from relatives. I cannot afford to buy them with my meager earnings. I began worrying that very soon I would have to skip my doses,” Khelen, a 45-year-old HIV-positive man, who uses one name and works as a porter in Imphal, the capital of the northeastern state of Manipur, told VOA. 

“Now I have heard this week that there is no stock-out of the drugs at the ART centers starting this week. This is truly very happy news for me.” 

DNP Plus founder Loon Gangte said that despite resistance from different quarters he and his colleagues had to continue their protest until the authorities met their demand.

“Pressure came from many sides to make us withdraw our protest. But we were very concerned about the health of our hundreds of thousands of HIV-positive brothers and sisters in the country and so we stood our ground and kept insisting that we would not call off our protest until our main demand is met,” Gangte told VOA.

“Now we have happily ended our protest as soon as the ART centers across the country have resumed the regular monthly supply of the drugs to all patients.”
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The World Health Organization is monitoring a cluster of 10 cases of pneumonia from an unknown cause in an outbreak in Argentina that so far has included three deaths.

The cases are linked to a single private clinic in the city of San Miguel de Tucumán, located in the northwest part of the country, according to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the regional office of the WHO.

An initial report Tuesday included five health care workers and a patient who was treated in the intensive care ward of the clinic, with symptoms emerging Aug. 18-22.

On Thursday, local health officials reported another three cases, bringing the total to nine, including three deaths. All three people who died had other health conditions.

On Friday, Argentina reported an additional case.

Symptoms have included fever, muscle and abdominal pain and shortness of breath. Several patients had pneumonia in both lungs.

Tests for known respiratory viruses and other viral, bacterial and fungal agents were all negative, PAHO said. Biological samples have been sent to Argentina’s National Administration of Laboratories and Health Institutes for additional testing, which will include an analysis for the presence of toxins.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, said given that the lungs are heavily involved, the cause is likely something the patients inhaled.

He first suspected Legionnaires’ disease, which is caused by inhaling droplets of water containing Legionella bacteria, but tests have ruled that out.

PAHO and the WHO are monitoring the outbreak and assisting local health officials with the investigation.

Osterholm said “mystery illnesses” do sometimes happen, and most often they can be explained by some local outbreak that does not have pandemic implications.

Osterholm said he expects more definitive information from Argentine health officials in the next five to seven days.
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A new hormone treatment improved the cognitive function of six men with Down syndrome by 10% to 30%, scientists said this week, adding the “promising” results may raise hopes of improving patients’ quality of life.

However, the scientists emphasized the small study did not point toward a cure for the cognitive disorders of people with Down syndrome and that far more research is needed.

“The experiment is very satisfactory, even if we remain cautious,” Nelly Pitteloud of Switzerland’s Lausanne University Hospital, co-author of a new study in the journal Science, said Thursday.

Down syndrome is the most common genetic form of intellectual disability, occurring in about one in 1,000 people, according to the World Health Organization.

Yet previous research has failed to significantly improve cognition when applied to people with the condition, which is why the latest findings are “particularly important,” the study said.

Recent discoveries have suggested that how the gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) is produced in the brain can affect cognitive functioning such as memory, language and learning.

GnRH hormones regulate how much testosterone and estrogen are produced, and increased levels of it help spur puberty.

“We wondered if this hormone could play any role in establishing the symptoms of people with Down syndrome,” said Vincent Prevot, study co-author and head of neuroscience research at France’s INSERM institute.

Research on mice

The team first established that five strands of microRNA regulating the production of GnRH were dysfunctional in mice specifically engineered for Down syndrome research.

They then demonstrated that cognitive deficiencies — as well as loss of smell, a common symptom of Down syndrome — were linked to dysfunctioning GnRH secretion in the mice.

The team then gave the mice a GnRH medication used to treat low testosterone and delayed puberty in humans, finding that it restored some cognitive function and sense of smell.

A pilot study was conducted in Switzerland involving seven men with Down syndrome aged 20 to 50.

They each received the treatment through their arm every two hours over a period of six months, with the drug delivered in pulses to mimic the hormone’s frequency in people without Down syndrome.

Cognition and smell tests were carried out during the treatment, as were MRI scans.

Six of the seven men showed improvement in cognition with no significant side effects, and none showed a change in sense of smell.

“We have seen an improvement of between 10% to 30% in cognitive functions, in particular with visuospatial function, three-dimensional representation, understanding of instructions as well as attention,” Pitteloud said.

The patients were asked to draw a simple 3D bed at several stages throughout the therapy. Many struggled at the beginning but by the end the efforts were noticeably better.

‘Improve quality of life’

The authors acknowledged some limitations of the study, including its size and that the choice of patients was “pushed by their parents.”

“The clinical trial only focused on seven male patients — we still have a lot of work to do to prove the effectiveness of GnRH treatment for Down syndrome,” Pitteloud said.

A larger study involving a placebo and 50 to 60 patients, a third of them women, is expected to begin in the coming months.

“We are not going to cure the cognitive disorders of people with Down syndrome, but the improvement seen in our results already seems fundamental enough to hope to improve their quality of life,” Pitteloud said.

Fabian Fernandez, an expert in cognition and Down syndrome at the University of Arizona who was not involved in the research, hailed the “tour de force study.”

He told AFP that while it is “difficult to envision” how such an intensive treatment could be used for young people, it might be better suited to delay the Alzheimer’s disease-related dementia suffered by many adults with Down syndrome.

It was also difficult to predict how such an improvement could impact the lives of people with the condition, he said.

“For some, it could be significant, however, as it would enable them to be more independent with daily living activities such as maintaining and enjoying hobbies, finding belongings, using appliances in the home and traveling alone.”
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The Serum Institute of India signed a deal this week with South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare to make four vaccines used in Africa.

The deal has been hailed as saving local vaccine production, which was at risk of shutting down after receiving no orders for a COVID vaccine. But medical aid group Doctors Without Borders says more efforts are needed for vaccines to be fully produced in Africa for Africans.

Four routine pediatric vaccines — pneumococcal vaccine, rotavirus vaccine, polyvalent meningococcal vaccine and hexavalent vaccine — will be made in South Africa with products from bulk drug substances supplied by India’s Serum Institute.

In addition to the 10-year agreement, South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare also anticipates receiving grant funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, CEPI.

“The partnership represents an important step for preventing the kinds of gross inequities of access to life-saving vaccines that emerged during the COVID pandemic,” said CEPI’s chief executive officer, Richard Hatchett. “We are proud to be part of an effort that will secure critically needed vaccine manufacturing capacity in Africa, for Africa so that it can be ready when it faces future epidemic or pandemic threats.”

But Candice Sehoma with Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign in South Africa is calling for more than just fill-and-finish deals.

“I think it’s a great step towards realizing the improvements in the African continent’s manufacturing capacity, particularly looking at vaccines. And actually looking into routine vaccines. I think that, for me, is a great step,” Sehoma said. “But I think, definitely, we could do with a lot more and even a full sharing of technology, so that we don’t find ourselves waiting in line for vaccines that are coming from high-income countries.”

Petro Terblanche, managing director of the South African company Afrigen, which reproduced Moderna’s MRNA COVID vaccine, says Aspen’s deal with the Serum Institute may not be healthy for other companies on the continent, as it could drown out local competition.

“So, the manufacturing capacity and the technology capabilities and the reach of the Serum Institute is very dominant, it is very, very powerful. However, if Serum Institute is prepared to do partnerships with Africa and South Africa for end-to-end manufacturing and technology transfer to Africa, it’s a positive development,” Terblanche said.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, deputy director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, says the agreement is an important step for African vaccine manufacturing.

“It has responded to African Union heads of state and government calls that 30 percent of our continent’s requirements for human vaccines be procured from Africa manufacturers. And we look forward to this being motivation for more expanded manufacturing of vaccines here on the continent of Africa,” Ouma said.

According to the Africa CDC, less than 1% of vaccines currently used on the continent are locally manufactured.

Aspen’s Group Communications Consultant Shauneen Beukes says they cannot comment on calls for the full African production of vaccines at this stage.
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