The Paul-Ehrlich-Institut supports African countries in strengthening their health systems.
As part of the Global Health Protection Programme (GHPP) launched by the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG), the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut provided support to African partner countries with the RegTrain-VaccTrain project until the end of 2022. The Institute assisted the participating countries in building up necessary scientific and regulatory capacity in the areas of clinical trials and medicinal product safety. The project was carried out in close cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO) and various African and international organisations in order to establish harmonised regulatory processes and procedures for all African countries and thus to promote cooperation between the different African authorities. The aim was to establish sustainable structures for monitoring the safety of medicines (and vaccines in particular) through regulatory training and advice in the fields of medicinal product safety and clinical testing of vaccines and biomedical therapeutics, as well as to create structures and capacities to be sufficiently prepared for future health crises.
The commitment of the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut to the areas of medicinal product safety and clinical trials will continue in 2023 with the VaccTrain 2.0 project. The VaccRelease project, which specifically supports the establishment of federal batch testing, was also recently initiated.
Dr Heidi Meyer (Head of Centre for International Cooperation, WHO)
European medicines authorities are supporting medicine regulatory functions in Rwanda with the European Commission-funded twinning project "Strengthening Rwanda Food and Drug Authority's regulatory functions related to medicinal products including vaccines". In its role in the twinning project, the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, together with the Belgian and French authorities, is supporting the partner agency Rwanda Food and Drug Authority in the establishment of federal vaccine batch testing.
The Republic of Rwanda intends to take on a pioneering role on the African continent, especially in the regulation of vaccines. In July 2022, the Rwandan capital Kigali was chosen as the seat of the future African Medicines Agency (AMA). A german vaccine manufacturer is currently planning to produce mRNA-based vaccines at a manufacturing facility in Kigali.