Global biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) have announced a new partnership to establish connections between African healthcare innovators and AstraZeneca’s A.Catalyst Network of more than 20 global health innovation hubs. The joint venture seeks to drive the development of engineering solutions that have the potential to address local challenges with a focus on health tech.
As part of its commitment to building international partnerships and solving global challenges, in 2014 the RAEng founded The Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, an annual award that grants crucial commercialisation support to ambitious innovators across Sub-Saharan Africa. To date, over 100 innovators are part of the Africa Prize alumni network.
Aleksandr Bedenkov, VP for Medical International at AstraZeneca
The AstraZeneca A.Catalyst Network brings together digital, R&D and commercial resources to reimagine the future of healthcare, working with partners to co-create solutions and establish integrated and strong health systems that benefit the whole patient experience. By connecting Africa Prize entrepreneurs to A.Catalyst Network, as well as the AstraZeneca supply chain and wider ecosystem, including investors, the AstraZeneca-RAEng partnership hopes to further strengthen the work of both organisations to nurture local talent and strengthen healthcare innovation and creativity on the African continent.
As part of the collaboration, AstraZeneca will join the prize’s network of expert mentors, offering training support for Africa Prize entrepreneurs, giving them access to tailored expertise and experience to help them develop their projects. AstraZeneca will also take part in a webinar series for the Africa Prize alumni network and current cohort, sharing knowledge and insights on health tech and other subjects.
“We want to offer entrepreneurs in emerging markets like Africa the same kind of platform and opportunities that their counterparts in other countries would benefit from. A.Catalyst Network offers exciting opportunities for health tech entrepreneurs to connect and collaborate with a truly global network of expertise and experience, helping to accelerate innovation and ensure that more patients can get access to the latest health tech solutions,” said Aleksandr Bedenkov, VP for Medical International at AstraZeneca.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
The South African health authorities have said that the government arrived at the decision to stop administering the AstraZeneca vaccine in the country because it showed less protection there than elsewhere because a SARS-CoV-2 variant that can apparently dodge key antibodies has become widespread. In the wake of the new finding, the country halted plans next week to launch the country’s first immunization campaign with the vaccine and may instead switch to a different one.
AstraZeneca
The stakes are high globally for this particular vaccine because its makers, AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, hope it will be widely used in developing countries; they project they can produce 3 billion doses this year for about $3 each, far more product at a far lower price than any other vaccine shown to offer protection against COVID-19.
Yet the South African trial of the vaccine, conducted in about 2000 people, found such a low efficacy against mild and moderate disease, under 25%, that it would not meet minimal international standards for emergency use. But scientists are hopeful it might still prevent severe disease and death—arguably the most important job for any COVID-19 vaccine. That was impossible to tell from this placebo-controlled trial because it was small and recruited relatively healthy, young people—their average age was only 31. None of the subjects in either arm of the study developed severe disease or required hospitalization. The new results are a “reality check,” Shabir Madhi of the University of the Witwatersrand, the trial’s principal investigator, said at a Sunday evening press conference. “It is time, unfortunately, for us to recalibrate our expectations of COVID-19 vaccines, as well as how we go about deciding how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa as well as globally.”
COVID-19 vaccines made by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Novavax have also been shown to offer weaker protection against B.1.351 (also known as 501.V2), the SARS-CoV-2 variant that now causes the vast majority of all infections in South Africa, than against older variants. The vaccines’ efficacy against mild disease in South Africa was 57% for J&J and 49% for Novavax—lower than in any other country they were tested.
But the J&J vaccine, which was put to the test in the largest of the studies, convincingly protected against severe disease and death, even against the B.1.351 variant, and Madhi remains “somewhat optimistic” that the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine will, too; the results are not “all doom and gloom,” he said.
SARS-CoV-2–targeting antibodies triggered by the J&J vaccine were “very similar,” he said, to those elicited by the AstraZeneca-Oxford candidate, and the two vaccines are based on a similar technology: Both induce the body to make the spike surface protein of SARS-CoV-2 by delivering its genes in a harmless adenovirus. In a 44,000-person trial, the J&J vaccine prevented 85% of severe cases and completely protected people from hospitalization and death in several countries, including the 15% of the participants who were from South Africa.
The AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine has produced confusing results from the start. Earlier preliminary results from trials in different countries showed a wide range of success rates against mild and moderate disease, but researchers have had difficulty interpreting the data because of differences in dose, intervals between doses, and variants in circulation. Just on Friday, a study suggested the vaccine offered strong protection against a more transmissible variant, B.1.1.7, that exploded in the United Kingdom and is now spreading fast throughout Europe.
In South Africa, the vaccine was given in two doses spaced 21 to 35 days apart. Antibodies made by vaccine recipients can typically “neutralize” SARS-CoV-2, meaning they can prevent it from infecting cells in culture experiments. But lab studies show they have far less power against B.1.351. Madhi stressed that the vaccine may still trigger a powerful T cell response, which can target and eliminate cells the variant manages to infect. He presented a test tube study showing how the mutations in the spike protein that allow B.1.351 to dodge neutralizing antibodies have little impact on T cell responses. “We believe that those T cell responses will still remain intact despite the mutations that exist in a B.1.351 variant,” Madhi said.
The AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine trial, which ran from June to November 2020, found that starting 2 weeks after the second dose—when participants presumably were fully immunized—19 cases of mild or moderate disease developed among the vaccinated, versus 23 in the placebo group, resulting in an efficacy of 21.9%. That is far below the 50% minimum required for emergency use authorization in many countries.
Researchers sequenced the viruses that infected trial participants and found a strong link between vaccine failure and B.1.351’s explosion in South Africa. In people who received one dose of the vaccine before the variant began to spread widely, efficacy against mild and moderate disease was still a respectable 75%.
South Africa last week received 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine and had planned to start to offer it to health care workers next week, which would have made it the first COVID-19 vaccine available in the country outside of clinical trials. Epidemiologist Salim Abdool Karim, who co-chairs the South African Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19, said at the Sunday press conference that the rollout of the vaccine in South Africa “needs to be put on temporary hold” in light of the disappointing results. Karim explained to Science that the J&J vaccine should be available in South Africa in roughly the same time frame, so there should be no delay in starting to protect health care workers.
Barry Schoub, who leads a government advisory subcommittee on COVID-19 vaccines, says, “We may need to look at combinations of the [AstraZeneca-Oxford] vaccine with other vaccines, which may in fact synergistically give a very good response.”
At a World Health Organization (WHO) press conference today that discussed the new findings at length, a chorus of scientists and public health experts emphasized that the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine may still play an important role in South Africa and elsewhere. “The retention of meaningful impact against severe disease is a very plausible scenario” for the product against the B.1.351 variant,” said Katherine O’Brien, who heads WHO’s Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals. The vaccine interval used in the trial was not long enough to build the most robust immune response, suggests Seth Berkley, who leads Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and also helps run the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility that aims to increase access to COVID-19 vaccines for resource-limited countries. And Richard Hatchett, another co-leader of the COVAX effort who also runs the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, stressed a point made repeatedly: During an emergency, you use the best tools at hand. “Obviously there is a world full of the wild-type virus that the AstraZeneca vaccine is known to work against, so it is vastly too early to be dismissing this,” Hatchett said. “This is a very important part of the global response to the current pandemic and we need to find better vaccines, probably, against the variants that are emerging.”
Karim, who also spoke at the WHO press conference, said South Africa is now evaluating a proposal to roll out the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine in a stepwise fashion, first assessing whether it impacts hospitalization rates in the first 100,000 people to receive it. “We don’t want to end up with a situation where we vaccinated a million people or 2 million people with a vaccine that may not be effective in preventing hospitalization and severe disease,” Karim said.
The Oxford team that originally designed the vaccine says it has already begun to work on a second-generation candidate that targets the mutated spike protein of the B.1.351 variant. Oxford’s Sarah Gilbert, who leads that effort, suggested in a press statement that a reformulated vaccine might be given as a booster shot to the existing one. “This is the same issue faced by all of the vaccine developers, and we will continue to monitor the emergence of new variants that arise in readiness for a future strain change,” Gilbert noted.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
The AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine has proven ‘minimally effective’ against the South African variant, according to the Wits Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics (VIDA) research unit. The #AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine has proven ‘minimally effective’ against the South African variant, according to the VIDA research unit.
South Africa’s Health Minister Zweli Mkhize
In an official report, researchers from South Africa and the UK found that “viral neutralisation by sera induced by the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 coronavirus vaccine against the B.1.351 coronavirus variant were substantially reduced when compared with the ‘original’ strain of the coronavirus”.
Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford, Sarah Gilbert revealed that efforts are already underway to develop a new generation of vaccines that could offer protection from emerging variants as booster jabs.
“We are working with AstraZeneca to optimise the pipeline required for a strain change should one become necessary. This is the same issue that is faced by all of the vaccine developers, and we will continue to monitor the emergence of new variants that arise in readiness for a future strain change.”
To this end, South Africa’s Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has announced that the vaccine roll out will be halted temporarily.
“The AstraZeneca vaccine will remain with us up until the scientists give us clear indications as to what we need to do.”
Mkhize goes on to say that the Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer vaccination programme will go ahead as planned.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Global pharmaceutical manufacturing firm AstraZeneca has announced the launching of its new Africa PUMUA Initiative across six countries in the continent. The initiative will be launched initially across Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Senegal, and then expand to other countries. The partnership with the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health and The Ethiopian Thoracic Society, is part of their new Africa PUMUA Initiative, aimed at redefining asthma care in Africa.
Barbara Nel, AstraZeneca Country President for African Cluster
The Africa PUMUA Initiative was designed in consultation and collaboration with government, healthcare societies and respiratory health experts to strengthen local health systems and centres to improve paediatric and adult asthma management across both the public and private sectors. The Africa PUMUA Initiative will support fundamental changes needed to advance clinical practice aligned to the Non Communicable Disease (NCD) service decentralisation programme roll-out by the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health.
Globally, more than 339 million people are living with asthma, with an estimated over 40 million people with asthma in Africa.The World Health Organisation (WHO) cautions that over 80% of asthma-related deaths occur in low-and lower-middle income countries.
AstraZeneca has launched the Africa PUMUA Initiative to highlight its commitment to improving the health outcomes of patients in Africa. By providing support of infrastructure, increasing awareness of the symptoms and risks of asthma, and building the capacity of all role players across the patient journey, the Africa PUMUA Initiative looks at addressing the barriers currently preventing access to care for patients with asthma.
As part of the partnership signed today, 27 January 2021, with The Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health and The Ethiopian Thoracic Society, AstraZeneca will provide 150 nebuliser machines to various hospitals within Ethiopia, as well as establish 47 nebulisation stations. The nebulisers will be allocated in consultation with the Ministry of Health and the Ethiopian Thoracic Society.
Barbara Nel, AstraZeneca Country President for African Cluster said: “We are unwavering in our commitment to improve care for asthma patients across Africa. People living with asthma should have the ability to live normal lives and deserve the best care. Through our Africa PUMUA initiative we aim to strengthen local health systems and centres. By working together to boost local medical knowledge and expertise and building an infrastructure for Asthma Patients, through the donation of nebulisation machines, nebulisation stations, spirometers and peak flow meters, we believe we will be able to redefine asthma care in Ethiopia.”
Dr Dereje Duguma , Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health, said : Through this important Public-Private Partnerships with the AstraZeneca Pharmaceutical and the Ethiopian Thoracic Society we will bring immense transformation to Asthma care. The partnership also goes in line with the Government of Ethiopia’s National Strategic Action Plan for Non-Communicable Diseases, effective diagnosis and enhanced referral systems. PUMUA will be a great tool in decentralization of these efforts. We hope this will be a good start to collaborating with AstraZeneca and look forward to seeing more endeavours. MOH supports pharmaceutical companies investing in the country as it is one of the key strategic areas in developing industries in the country.”
“It is estimated that more than 5 million people in Ethiopia are living with asthma, and to date there has been no national treatment guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of Asthma. The Ethiopian Thoracic Society strongly believes that the implementation of the Africa PUMUA initiative will contribute significantly to the effective diagnosis and management of Asthma. The capacity building activities and the update and alignment of treatment guidelines and protocols for chronic asthma to GINA (Global Initiative for Asthma management) guidelines, will help to improve outcomes for asthma patients in Ethiopia. Cascading the treatment protocol and guidelines throughout the country will enable us provide standardised Asthma diagnosis and treatment in Ethiopia,” said Ethiopian Thoracic Society President, Dr Tewodros Haile Gebremariam.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
As the World Health Organisation (WHO) identifies Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) as the number one cause of death worldwide, disproportionately affecting people in low and middle income countries]. Similarly, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has predicted that NCDs will cost the worldwide economy more than $47 trillion in lost productivity and wages by 2030.
Barbara Nel, AstraZeneca’s Country President for African Cluster (South Africa, Sub Sahara and French Speaking Africa)
Through public and private partnerships (PPP’s), these challenges have started to be addressed to ensure that an equitable and inclusive healthcare system is available in the future to respond to the healthcare needs of all Africans.
Barbara Nel, AstraZeneca’s Country President for African Cluster (South Africa, Sub Sahara and French Speaking Africa) said “At AstraZeneca we recognise that breakthrough science and healthcare doesn’t happen in isolation, it is the result of collaboration and partnership. Our commitment to our patients and our responsibility to work closely with partners and stakeholders is integral to our work in Africa to create a sustainable impact and to seek answers to health challenges.”
AstraZeneca has been working with governments, policy makers and regulatory bodies in Africa for over 27 years to ensure that more patients in Africa have access to high quality healthcare, from prevention and screening programmes to supporting early intervention, treatment and disease management. This year alone has seen AstraZeneca launch and expand a number of health access programmes that span non- communicable diseases in several African countries.
The first of our new initiatives, Africa PUMUA Initiative (breathe) addresses one of the most common non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – asthma.
Through partnership with governments, healthcare professionals (HCPs) and health societies in Ethiopia, Kenya and Ghana, the Africa PUMUA Initiative aims to improve paediatric and adult asthma management across the public and private sectors. It focuses on local health system strengthening, health worker capacity building, awareness and education activities and equitable access to AstraZeneca’s respiratory medicines for patients.
In addition, in South Africa, AstraZeneca has joined forces with the National Department of Health (NDoH) to shape the new and innovative National NCD screening programme. As part of the partnership, AstraZeneca donated 10,000 electronic blood pressure (BP) machines, which will be used by healthcare workers in under-resourced communities. The programme supports the vision of taking healthcare to the communities; utilising community healthcare workers to bring primary care closer to patients, enabling earlier access to screening and diagnosis.
AstraZeneca’s Phakamisa (uplift) initiative, launched 10 years ago, brings together different organisations to help reduce the burden of NCDs on South Africa’s public healthcare system, currently focusing on breast and prostate cancer. Despite many gains in cancer research and treatment in recent years, breast and prostate cancer remain a growing health concern, compounded through cultural barriers, limited access to healthcare facilities and late diagnosis. This year AstraZeneca has expanded the initiative through partnerships with multiple healthcare stakeholders.
Through strong collaboration between community, civil society, government and private entities, Phakamisa aims to improve breast and prostate cancer management in the public sector and specifically support patients in the early detection of disease, through our three-pillared approach of training, awareness and access.
Disease prevention is another critical pillar of our access to healthcare work and part of our approach to supporting the development of sustainable health systems. Our Young Health Programme is a philanthropically funded disease prevention initiative focused on NCDs and young people aged 10 to 24 in vulnerable and under-resourced areas around the world. Together with our partners, the Young Health Programme uses education, advocacy, research and mentorship to empower young people to make informed health choices and build more protective environments to help live longer and healthier lives. In Africa, the programme was launched in Nairobi, Kenya in 2016, in partnership with Plan International and has just been renewed for another 5 years.
This year the Young Health Programme expanded to South Africa and Angola, partnering with UNICEF with the aim of contributing to the global goal to reach more than five million young people with NCD prevention messages, training 1,000 youth advocates, and positively shaping public policy around the world, over the next five years.
Healthy Heart Africa is AstraZeneca’s innovative programme committed to tackling hypertension and the increasing burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD) across Africa. Since launching in Kenya six years ago and subsequently expanding to Ethiopia in 2016, Tanzania in 2018, Ghana in 2019 and Uganda in 2020, HHA has conducted over 16 million blood pressure screenings in the community and in healthcare facilities; trained over 7,300 healthcare workers to provide education and awareness, screening and treatment services for hypertension; activated over 800 healthcare facilities in Africa to provide hypertension services, with the establishment of secure supply chains for low cost, high-quality branded antihypertensive medicines where applicable, and identified over 2.9 million elevated blood pressure readings.
Barbara Nel: “The various partnerships and initiatives introduced and expanded this year are testament to AstraZeneca’s commitment to working together with diverse healthcare stakeholders to shape the future of healthcare in Africa. At AstraZeneca we wish to be part of the healthcare solution, for the benefit of all patients.”
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
