The West African country is exploring options to obtain or purchase vaccines through the COVAX facility to enable at least 70% of its population to be vaccinated.
Some of the vaccine donations it received had shelf lives that left only weeks for the shots to be administered. Nigeria destroyed more than one million expired vaccines last month.
“We are working very hard with the Ministry of Health to develop the vaccine,” Buhari said on state television. “Until we’re successful, we shouldn’t make noise about it.”
Speaking to CNN on Friday, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Health, Dr. Olorunnimbe Momora said the country is working to set up a vaccine-manufacturing center within two or three years. But it will depend on the availability of funds, he said.
“Vaccine manufacturing is not done in a jiffy. Yesterday (Thursday), we tied up with some of our international development partners and funding partners towards developing our vaccine manufacturing facility. This is a partnership between the federal government and an indigenous pharmaceutical company. The beach is a joint venture project,” Mamora told CNN.
The senior health official said: “The timeline is a function of how quickly we get funding. We have to get funding through international agencies as well as technical support. So, we’re looking at the next two to three years.” Huh.”
Buhari said his administration is encouraging Nigerians to get vaccinated. Less than 4% of adults in Africa’s country with a population of over 200 million have been fully vaccinated.
Momora says vaccine hesitation was still a problem among Nigerians. “We want to double or triple our vaccination rate … to be able to achieve herd immunity by vaccinating less than 70% of the population, but we are still dealing with vaccine hesitation,” he said. Said, “We have a huge stockpile of vaccines now.”
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