By Nqobile Dludla
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -African drugmaker Aspen Pharmacare is in talks with partners to manufacture mpox vaccines at its facilities, Chief Executive Officer Stephen Saad told Reuters on Tuesday.
The continent is under pressure to curb an outbreak of the potentially deadly infection that the World Health Organization declared to be a global health emergency in mid-August, after a new strain began spreading from Democratic Republic of Congo to neighbouring countries.
Thirteen African countries have reported more than 22,800 mpox cases and 622 deaths this year, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said last month.
“We are speaking to people,” Saad said in an interview without naming the companies.
“We have capacity and we have capability to make mpox vaccine…and we’re comfortable that we can manufacture the product.”
To avoid being left with idle capacity as happened when Aspen made COVID-19 vaccines for which demand never materialised, Aspen has provided two preconditions, Saad said.
“The first is we need to know that we have a commitment to volumes, regardless. We can’t be told that we’re going to get a billion (orders) and then it becomes nothing,” he said.
“The second area is, it costs money to transfer these products into a facility, so we will do it if someone pays for the tech transfer into our facility,” he added.
Mpox can spread through close contact. Usually mild, it is fatal in rare cases. It causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions on the body.
(Reporting by Nqobile Dludla, editing by Bhargav Acharya and Barbara Lewis)
