Coronavirus: Indonesia in talks with WHO as it aims to become vaccine manufacturing hub

Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said the country is well placed to join South Africa in being one of the WHO’s vaccine ‘technology transfer hubs’

He said Indonesian pharmaceutical companies are also in talks with vaccine manufacturers and developers

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Indonesian Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin shows off an AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine vial at a mass vaccination programme in Surabaya. Photo: Reuters

Published: 3:21pm, 16 Sep 2021Updated: 3:22pm, 16 Sep 2021

Indonesia is in talks with the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as six drug companies to become a global hub for manufacturing vaccines, it revealed on Thursday.

Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said Indonesia would kick-start the initiative by prioritising purchases of Covid-19 vaccines from companies that shared technology and set up facilities in the country.

“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 US company mean the project will take time, a senior WHO official told Reuters.