ANKARA

West African country of Nigeria will start manufacturing vaccines soon adhering to required global standards, the country’s local media reported on Friday.

“With regards to the establishment of the World Health Organization’s global benchmarking and adoption of international best practices, we want to get to maturity level three so that Nigeria can manufacture its vaccines,” local news website The Nation reported, quoting Director-General of National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Mojisola Adeyeye.

“We are upgrading the agency’s laboratories to international standards using equipment that are compliant to ISO 17025. NAFDAC laboratories are changing very rapidly with improvements in new equipment and supplies,” she added.

Adeyeye noted that Nigeria aims to manufacture 70% of pharmaceuticals locally to cut down dependence on imports.

She said the NAFDAC is a leader in Africa “in terms of ensuring that the COVID-19 vaccines can be tracked and traced to the patients and also monitoring of adverse long reactions”.

” This is our new normal and it is because we are changing the way we think. After all, we want to safeguard the health of our people, “she said.

Besides Nigeria, India, and Thailand, are the other two countries focusing on local production of various vaccines, according to a US study released by the National Center for Biotechnology Information in 2019.

Despite that Africa represents 17% of the world's population, and reportedly "has the highest incidence of mortality caused by infectious diseases," it cannot remarkably manufacture vaccines that are considered essential to reduce mortality, and improving life expectancy, as well as promoting economic growth, said the study.