The country’s conversations on COVID-19 vaccine could have been centred on the locally developed candidate by the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID), Osun, rather than relying on Pfizer for early supply.
Lack of funding has driven a wedge between successful preclinical trials and human trials, which might have placed Africa’s largest economy on the edge of production in the year— if robustly funded.
Regrettably, Christian Happi, a professor and chief executive of the centre leading the vaccine development, hasn’t attracted attention either from the government or private sector investors, despite having discovered a neutralising antibody that could weaken about 90 percent of the viruses and suit the genetic makeup of Africans specifically.
The nature of research and development (R&D) in the healthcare sector with outcomes such as vaccine production, for instance, gulps large resources which the Nigerian government does not have.
About 80 percent of healthcare expenditure of $16.5 billion is sourced out of individual pockets of Nigeria as budgetary allocation to the health sector averages 5 percent of the national budget, according to various health sector sources, including the World Health Organisation (WHO).
According to a Deloitte report, R&D activities of 2020 are projected to be widely distributed, with pharmaceutical companies co-ordinating and integrating at the centre, with focus on understanding disease biology and genetics, current standards and cost of care and treatment pathways.
But the government has been weak at building and protecting the economic factors and regulatory environment that top the considerations when companies evaluate new markets.
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Compared with sectors that led capital importation in 2020 second quarter including equity, $464.5 million; financing, $309.4 million; production, $110.7 million; according to the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data, there are no data available to quantify the investment flow into the healthcare sector.
Another Deloitte analysis on mergers and acquisition trends in life sciences and healthcare finds that the North American healthcare market remains the primary investment destination for the industry, followed by the Asia-Pacific region based on these regions’ capacity to fulfil to investors desire to diversify their portfolios.
Unlike ACEGID, Moderna, a US biotechnology company with the leading candidate in the phase three of COVID-19 vaccine production, received $483 million from the U.S. government for its vaccine development.
Also, Pfizer, the US firm that Nigeria looks up to, had its government invest $2 billion under a contract for the off-taking of 100 million doses in an eventual breakthrough. The arrangement is expected to create a ready market for the product.
Astrazaneca, outside the US, got one of its early investment interests from the US government.
The ACEGID vaccine candidate is merely one out of many locally developed ideas that lack wings to fly.
A rapid test, SARS COV-2 Isothermal Molecular Assay, developed by the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) to detect COVID-19 status within 40 minutes, has not translated into widespread adoption as investors wave seem to be bypassing it.
Experts say improved healthcare system in Nigeria cannot be achieved in isolation as R&D remains a benchmark for growth.
Babatunde Salako, director-general, NIMR, said challenges troubling the development of research in Nigeria include donor-driven researches. Nigeria’s health research fund stands at 0.08 percent as against the two percent recommended by the World Health Organisation, and challenges beleaguering the development of research in Nigeria.
“Research is the greatest engine for national development, through which a developing nation and poor nation can attain economic prosperity, social engineering, patent and innovations, drug discovery, job creation, human longevity and health system impact,” he said.
“There is shortage of faculty and research leaders as well as inadequate facilities and few career opportunities for building researchers. However, there should be increased funding on the part of government, trainings in new technologies, acquiring new skills, and extensive collaboration.
“Also, there is a need for increased advocacy for policy and decision makers to address the challenges of building health research innovations to practice more quickly, helping to bridge the service to science gap,” said Salako.
Doyin Odunbanjo, public health expert, said that scientists and academia have criticised the federal government over the gradual decline of research in Nigeria, noting that Nigeria can learn from other developed countries in strengthening their research by addressing economic challenges, bridging knowledge and skill gaps while building solutions.
Odubanjo said that Nigeria continues to experience an all-time decline in the quantity and quality of its research output.
According to him, government must be committed to R&D and innovation funding, developing strong institutions, enhancing the academia-industrial linkage as well as implementing a workable science, technology and innovation policy in order to bolster and diversify the economy.
“Government should also provide various fiscal incentives for the health sector and other industrial firms in their various clusters so as to encourage them to engage in R&D and innovation activities, either through reverse engineering or inventing new ones, as this will not only lead to economic growth but also raise the global competitiveness of Nigeria,” said Odubanjo.
Collaboration
Nigeria is now seeing significant experience of public and private health-care sectors forming partnerships and collaborations but there needs to be more accurate evaluation to inform future scaling up of the sector generally, experts say.
They add that collaboration between the government and the private sector in the delivery of goods or services to the public is critical, as it has emerged as a possible vehicle to enable the advancement towards Universal Health Coverage.
“Public private partnership is built on sustainability. It means collaboration with one another, committing to strategies that will increase visibility and deepen financing business of health penetration and not people dictating policy,” Clare Omatseye, managing director/CEO at JNC International (JNCI) and president Healthcare Federation of Nigeria-HFN.
“We need to get our policies right, both public and private sectors together develop. There are different policies but we also found out that the biggest problem is implementation,”she said.
Also speaking, Njide Ndili, new vice president, said, “I remain an advocate for inclusion of private sector to support government efforts and as stakeholders, must continue to push for funding and investment into the health sector.
“We must pursue efficiency, transparency, and accountability for a sustainable healthcare delivery system through innovative frameworks and collaboration amongst all stakeholders. The problems in the Nigerian healthcare system are too great for any one organisation or stakeholder to solve.”
