Africa is currently facing a big problem. Apart from the obvious poverty, wars, and starvation, they are currently riddled with all sorts of disease. Because of this Africa needs a lot of vaccines to try to keep their country safer and more healthy. Africa has been relying heavily on importing vaccines and medicines from other countries. However, Africa is looking to change that. The continent only produces 1 percent of the worlds medicine but their population takes up 17 percent of the world. This statistic implies that they can barley provide for themselves. Africa is looking to begin manufacturing and providing vaccines for it’s own people. The other goal here is to get the prices on other vaccines down so they can be more affordable.
After reading this article I can say that it’s more than likely a step in the right direction for Africa. They seem to be moving in the right direction to better their country. With so much disease and sickness in Africa it’s a good start to produce their own medicine. This way it can be made and distributed to the people of Africa directly, thus making it a quicker process for the sick to get better. Prices on imports should go down as well. Last year Africa spent 900 million dollars on basic vaccines for children. This could go down significantly if they could make their own for cheap. There are many concerns as well. Firstly, is costs. I firmly believe that it will be very expensive to research, test, and make all these vaccines. Africa is so impoverished it seems they would struggle to get the research underway. And if they did come up with a product to sell, it would be very difficult to make a profit on the product. The last concern is that they aren’t very advanced technologically. It could be a struggle to get a good product in such a large quantity.