Indonesia in talks with WHO to become global vaccine hub: minister

Tom Allard and Kate Lamb, Reuters JAKARTA - Indonesia is in talks with the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as six drug companies to become a global hub for manufacturing vaccines, its health minister told Reuters. Detailing the ambitious strategy for the first time, Budi Gunadi Sadikin said in an interview that Indonesia would kickstart the initiative by prioritizing purchases of COVID-19 vaccines from companies that shared technology and set up facilities in Indonesia. "We are working with the WHO to be one of the global manufacturing hubs for mRNA," he said, adding he had directly lobbied WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on a trip earlier this month to Europe. "The WHO has pointed to South Africa as the first location, and I said that logically Indonesia should be the second." The new "technology transfer hubs" are part of a WHO strategy to more widely distribute vaccine production globally and build capacity in developing countries to make new generation vaccines like Moderna and Pfizer's nucleic acid-based mRNA jabs which can be quickly adapted to handle new virus variants. Efforts to develop a base for COVID-19 vaccine production in South Africa will focus on trying to replicate Moderna's shot, but a lack of progress in talks with the U.S. company mean the project will take time, a senior WHO official told Reuters. Budi said Indonesia was keen to build expertise in mRNA vaccines, as well as viral vector shots such as those produced by AstraZeneca. A WHO spokesperson said Indonesia was one of 25 low and middle income countries to express interest in hosting a vaccine hub but declined to say if it was a leading candidate. Budi said Indonesia was well-placed to export vaccines around the world, especially as it is the world's most populous Muslim-majority country and could guarantee that its jabs were halal, or permissible according to Islam.

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