. South Africa is one of only a handful of African countries — the others are Egypt, Ethiopia, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia — with at least some capability to make vaccines. Yet our country is producing next to none. South Africa, for instance, has world-class local vaccine-production facilities in the form of the Cape Town-based company, Biovac, which was created in 2003 in partnership with the government as a way to “establish local vaccine manufacturing capability”. And although Biovac is putting a process in place to produce the pharmaceutical company, Sanofi Pasteur’s six-in-one jab, Hexaxim, as well as Pfizer’s Prevnar 13, it has not yet produced any vaccine from start to finish in two decades of existence. (Hexaxim protects children against diseases such as hepatitis B, polio, tetanus and whooping cough and Prevnar 13 prevents middle ear infection in children and certain types of pneumonia).