Posted by Layi Adeloye on
A new local vaccines manufacturing firm, Biovaccines Nigeria Limited, is in the offing, with the aim of attaining self-sufficiency in local vaccines production and saving the country huge expenditures spent on vaccines importation yearly.
A new local vaccines manufacturing firm, Biovaccines Nigeria Limited, is in the offing, with the aim of attaining self-sufficiency in local vaccines production and saving the country huge expenditures spent on vaccines importation yearly.
Nigeria's total import bill on foreign procurement of yellow fever and other vaccines in the last 15 years, has been put at over N12billion yearly.
Disclosing this at an interactive forum held with journalists in the premises of May and Baker Nigeria Plc in Lagos, the Managing Director of the company, Mr. Joseph Odumodu, said, however, that the huge expenditure would soon become a thing of the past as his company had concluded arrangements with the Federal Government on the local production of vaccines.
The May and Baker boss revealed that a Memorandum of Understanding for a partnership in the new company, Biovaccines Nigeria Limited, was signed between his company and the Federal Government a fortnight ago.
The company, in which May and Baker has 51 per cent holding and the government 49 per cent, is a reactivation of the Federal Vaccine Production Laboratory in Yaba, Lagos, which formerly produced vaccines in the 1970s before it was rested in 1991.
'We are investing over N510million in the vaccine production business that is expected to take off in the next few months," Odumodu disclosed, adding that May and Baker was taking up the facility 'both as a national duty and as a business."
'Apart from over 60 years experience and know-how in drug manufacturing, May and Baker has over 30 years experience in vaccine distribution," he said.
In order to ensure the success of the project, Odumodu expressed his company's intention to call in its international relationships with world vaccine producers and the World Health Organisation and UNICEF - accredited vaccine manufacturers in Indonesia, India and Malaysia, to transform Biovaccines to a regional centre of excellence for vaccine production in Africa.
According to him, Biovaccines would not only make the country self-sufficient in the production of basic human vaccines, but would also earn foreign exchange through the export of excess products to other African countries.
'The project will also help reverse an impending trend of increased child mortality from immunisable diseases in developing countries by guaranteeing regularity of quality, safe and affordable vaccine supply in the country," he stated.
He added that the investment in Biovaccines Nigeria Limited represented another opportunity to build an enduring investment portfolio for the shareholders of the country, saying that the commercial viability of vaccines in Nigeria had never been in doubt as 'Nigeria spends N12billlion annually to import vaccines."
The Punch, Monday, July 18, 2005