The Minister for Science, Technology and Innovations Dr Monica Musenero has come out to say that Uganda has made significant progress in manufacturing it’s own vaccine which is now complete by 70%.
Minister Musenero gave this update while addressing journalists today 3rd November 2021.
She added that Uganda has been manufacturing two four types of vaccines but two are at 70% and 50% respectively.
“We subdivided the manufacturing into 10 steps for the first vaccine which is most progressed, we are on the final stage of testing in animals which is the seventh step. There are multiple steps of testing on animals but we are on the final one,” Musenero revealed.
“After this stage, we shall go to the stage of manufacturing and testing in human beings for the most advanced vaccine we are working on. We hope to move onto manufacturing on an agreeable grade,” she added.
She further said that they are on the fifth stage for the second vaccine as they encountered a number of challenges.
This hindered the government from from progressing well due to the lack of some key inputs during the process.
“We have kept waiting and waiting so as to be able to import them. What we thought we would get in one week of shipping didn’t and the process became longer. This is largely due to the fact that we never built systems for this and have to stop and build systems as we import. We hope to start the sixth stage very soon,” Dr Musenero added.
Furthermore, Dr Musenero said that the other two vaccines were developed by the government to ensure that the vaccines are able to cater for the country’s capacity.
She however said that these may not progress further and are likely to go out of use.
Musenero said that these two other vaccines are being used to develop the Ribonucleic acid (RNA) and vector technology which might prove to be useful in the future.
