A Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa) depot in Embakasi, Nairobi/ NMG
NAIROBI, Kenya Jan 21- The Kenyan government has invited firms across the globe to bid for the construction of a Covid-19 vaccine plant, a move aimed at locally manufactured jabs.
Through a public notice, the State is looking to recruit a consultant and a firm to design, build, commission and maintain a fully-fledged vaccine manufacturing facility.
The tender has been floated through an advertisement by state-owned commercial and manufacturing firm, Kenya BioVax Institute.
“To achieve this objective, the Government of Kenya desires to recruit a GMP consultant and a firm to design-build-commission-maintain a fully-fledged vaccine manufacturing facility,” a public notice, signed by the director-general Kenya BioVax Institute states.
Floating of the tender comes barely three months after President Uhuru Kenyatta announced that Kenya had started building a filling plant for the Covid-19 vaccines set to be commissioned by April 2022.
“As the first step towards this goal, we have established the Kenya BioVax Limited as a venture that would locally produce anti-Covid-19 vaccines. I, therefore, directed the Ministry of Health to operationalise the company, ” President Uhuru Kenyatta said.
Kenya Biovax is expected to be a fill-and-finish factory, where vials will be filled with vaccines and packaged for distribution.
In the pharmaceutical industry, many drug makers use third parties for this final process of manufacturing. Such facilities package ready-made vaccines and distribute them.
According to the Ministry of Health, the Nairobi facility will be built at the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa) depot in Embakasi. Kemsa Kitengela depot was overlooked as a suitable site for the plant as the area is densely populated, the ministry said.
The plant will also produce other vaccines such as polio drops. Vaccine ingredients will be imported in bulk. At the new plant, the vaccines will be produced, sealed in vials, labelled and distributed.
In May 2021, the Health ministry said talks were underway with the Oxford AstraZeneca manufacturers to import large quantities for repackaging in vials.
Vaccines deployment task force chairman Willis Akhwale said: “We have gone for what we call the APIs, which is the active pharmaceutical ingredients. We have identified a partner, and we are now in nondisclosure, which is why a lot of information is unavailable. We need to sign first.”
Upon completion of the vaccine manufacturing plant, the number of vaccination sites in Kenya will be increased to 3,000, from 800 currently, and the average number of daily inoculations will be doubled.
Kenya plans to vaccinate 26 million adult Kenyans by end of June 2022, with plans underway to have a fully-fledged human vaccine manufacturing capability by 2024.
