Distinguished participants, partners, and colleagues – I am delighted to welcome you to this workshop on vaccine manufacturing for the Southeast Asia and Western Pacific Regions.
This workshop is crucial in addressing one of the major issues faced by many countries in accessing vaccines.
The global shortage of vaccine manufacturing facilities has been a chronic issue not only for COVID-19 vaccines but also for many other childhood vaccines for routine immunization – which is why this is important both now, and for the future.
Local production of vaccines has been proposed to improve access, strengthen public health and enhance industrial and economic development.
In the Western Pacific, six countries – Australia, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Viet Nam and recently, Malaysia – have contributed to the national, regional and global supply of vaccines.
Over the past decade, the Region's contribution to the global supply base of vaccines has increased through the strengthening of national regulatory authorities.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, more countries have aspired to host local production through technology transfer to meet the acute vaccine shortage.
At the same time, we recognize that setting up local manufacturing sites is not that easy and is resource-intensive. It requires close collaboration between many actors including financing authorities, public health bodies, NRAs, clinical research facilities, laboratories and manufacturers.
In 2017 at the 68th Regional Committee for the Western Pacific, Member States adopted the Regional action agenda on regulatory strengthening, convergence and cooperation for medicines and the health workforce, and following the action agenda, the Regional Alliance of NRAs was formed.
The Alliance has been critical in facilitating overall access to COVID-19 vaccines in the Region over the past two years through the reliance mechanism and cooperation. I hope to see this regional collaboration further stimulate capacity for local production.
Our fight against COVID-19 has emerging challenges, including vaccine breakthroughs and the circulation of new variants affecting vaccine effectiveness. Hence, we urge countries to prioritize efforts towards strengthening local production of vaccines.
We seek further guidance from participating government officials, public and private partners on equitable access to affordable vaccines through promotion of local manufacturing to better address future pandemics and support routine immunization.
Finally I want to acknowledge the hard work and support of our HQ colleagues under the leadership of Dr Soumya Swaminathan.
I wish you all a productive and successful meeting.