Bangladesh's initiative to build vaccine plant losing steam?

The country's initiative to build a vaccine plant and research centre of its own is losing steam apparently with the intensity of the pandemic waning.

The bitter experience of being promised Covid vaccines and not getting those in time seems to be lost on the authorities.

Even though the government had said it was a priority project, the plans have not gotten off the drawing board in over eight months.

The development project proposal (DPP) is yet to be finalised and the six-acre land in Gopalganj, designated for the project, has not been acquired yet, officials concerned said.

No headway has been made to get a foreign biotechnology firm signed for the technology transfer of vaccines and production of protein-based Covid-19 vaccines, they said.

In July last year, the government moved to set up a fully-fledged vaccine plant and research institute after the Covid-19 vaccine supply debacle earlier that year.

On July 16, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced in parliament that her government was going to set up a vaccine institute.

The institute, the first of its kind here, would have three components -- a vaccine institute, a vaccine packaging plant, and a research and development site. The packaging plant would fill ampules, label them, and ensure quality.

Health ministry officials at that time had said the construction of the packaging plant would be done by this May. Now they are saying they have made major progress but it would take up to a year and a half to finish.

Even before the PM's announcement in parliament, Health Minister Zahid Maleque told reporters on June 26 last year that he had asked officials to make a project profile.

Weeks later, the ministry formed a nine-member technical committee on vaccine production on July 12.

The committee recommended signing a contract with the US biotechnology firm Dyadic International for vaccine technology transfer and initiating discussions for producing protein-based Covid vaccines.

But the work of the committee seems to have stopped after that.

Abdur Rahman, a member of the committee and dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Dhaka University, told The Daily Star, "We had no meeting since we made those recommendations last year. I have no idea about the latest situation."

Regarding the slow pace of the project, Ehsanul Kabir Jaglul, coordinator of the project and managing director and CEO of Essential Drug Company Ltd, told The Daily Star, "We are working to build a state-of-the-art vaccine production and research facility so that we can develop our own expertise. It is a huge job. So, the delay is normal.

"The primary reason behind the delay is that some of the landowners lodged cases with the court. We could resolve the issue only last month. Without land, we can't go ahead," Kabir said.

He hoped that land acquisition would be done in three months (by July).

About the delay in preparing the DPP, he said, "We have already submitted the pre-DPP to the ministry, and are progressing with other work based on it. We can't finalise the DPP before we ensure land acquisition."

Kabir said the initial project cost is estimated to be around Tk 3,000 crore and it would be completed within five years.

About the deal with Dyadic, he said, "We have sent the draft MoU to the health ministry a month ago. The law ministry has given the go-ahead. It is waiting for the foreign-ministry vetting."

He said that there was a meeting between the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and officials of Economic Relations Division and Essential Drug officials on April 4.

"We are hopeful of getting $300 million in loans from the bank," Kabir said.

"We are now working on finalising the DPP. We will start training people within the next month [May] with support from the ADB."

Prof Nazrul Islam, a member of the National Technical Advisory Committee (NTAC) on Covid-19, told The Daily Star last week, "Such delay for a priority project is not good at all.

"When there is urgency from the top executive [the prime minister] of the government, officials work, otherwise they do not … this is a very bad culture.

"A vaccine institute is urgent not only to meet the Covid-19 vaccine demands but for other vaccines too," Nazrul stressed.