South Africa was able to do emergency diagnostics development for SARS2 - everything from antigens and antibodies made in plants, to positive control RNA targets for PCR amplification. Also made in plants B-)

Need presentation view for Mlisana slides?

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I suggest the lesson from South Africa is that we can improve things. It takes the policy makers to priorities and allocate resources!

It is VERY obvious that, together with drastic improvement in Africa’s vaccine manufacturing capacity, should come a parallel improvement in capacity to make the reagents to go into diagnostic kits for use in Africa for neglected diseases in Africa.

agree

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Fully agree - prioritisation must come with resources for sustainability

Great story about NHLS, Koleka!

🙏 thanks

A One Health approach is to be recommended: make reagents that can be used as diagnostics, and potentially as vaccines - for animals and/or people.

Thanks Marleen!

Our plant-based system produced a full suite of Covid-reagents for Diagnostics very quickly but unfortunately local rapid diagnostic kit manufacturers had to wait a long time to get regulatory approval for their antigen kits, resulting in them not being able to get into the market timeously and the market being flooded by imports which in themselves do not add any value to the industry by the way of employment, skills development and support of local manufacturers.

Are there concrete plans to actually fund initiatives in Africa to make reagents for use as diagnostics, past the end of the COVID pandemic?

This is the opportunity and we must seize it. It is in our hands. We should recruit a small number of Africa countries who are interested and make specific proposals to EU. There are many possibilities.

Possibilities: I like possibilities B-) Eh, Belinda??

thanks for great session Declan and colleagues. Sorry that I have to leave already, flight to catch :)

Home testing for Covid is common internationally. Is SAHPRA considering allowing home based testing?

Yes!

Thanks Ed!

And??

Declan, Kenneth, we need Manhattan Project-Type initiatives - and NOT competitive project-driven individual applications - to develop in this area. Otherwise it’s all piecemeal.

Agree!! We should set up a process to take this forward

Maybe working with FIND?

Absolutley

Thanks, Marta!

Tying in with the AU PAVM Initiative could be useful - given recent plans of action already exist?

Thanks Marta - agree FIND becomes a possible vehicle to drive some of these efforts.

Thanks, Koleka. We want to make the alliance concept a reality, because it will take all of us. We are all in agreement that need to use the current momentum to jointly step up the lobbying. As Kenneth just said, one voice is critical.

I unfortunately have to drop off for another meeting. Thank you for this great session and I look forward to participating in crafting a way forward.

I concur with Kenneth on the imaging front, and while not a traditional focus on FIND, it is part of our new strategy to explore gaps and opportunities.

Vaccines for the nastiest pathogens developing AMR….

fully agree

Great session: thanks, all!

Thanks Declan.