Cover picture by: Rio Tuasikal
Story by: By Jenny Larsen
The Cuban government recently announced that its Soberana II vaccine against COVID-19 will soon enter Phase III trials, bringing the country one important step closer to producing Latin America's first vaccine against the virus. Far from being an overnight success, Cuba's ability to develop a vaccine is the result of decades-long investment in its biopharmaceutical industry, which in its early stages of development was supported by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).
Cuba hopes to inoculate its entire population against COVID-19 with a home-grown vaccine this year. The country has four potential vaccines in development, the most advanced of which - Soberana II - is due to start Phase III trials in March with 150,000 volunteers. If it clears this final clinical hurdle, the Cuban vaccine will be the first to be developed in Latin America.
According to the Havana-based Finlay Vaccine Institute (IFV), 100 million doses could be supplied in 2021 for both domestic use and export. Cuba has signed a deal to carry out clinical trials in Iran in collaboration with the country's Pasteur Institute, while Jamaica, Viet Nam and Venezuela, among others, have expressed interest in obtaining the vaccine once it passes the necessary safety and efficacy tests.
As international squabbles over fair distribution grow, amid charges that rich countries are hoarding supplies, a successful roll-out of Soberana II could provide a potential lifeline to developing countries seeking to immunize their populations against COVID-19.
That the small Caribbean island is ahead of many more developed countries in the race to find an effective vaccine may seem surprising. Yet decades of experience and investment in Cuba's biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors, which in its early stages was supported by UNIDO and other international organizations, have enabled the industry to direct resources quickly and efficiently towards emergency vaccine development.
In the years following the 1959 Revolution, Cuba made the establishment of a high-level, prevention-focused health care system a priority. The country's approach to health was both a matter of socialist principles and a response to a US trade embargo, which from 1962 onwards blocked almost all imports from the US, including medicines and other essentials.
Cuba therefore set about investing in training more doctors and created scientific research institutes to support the development of a home-grown biopharmaceutical industry that would meet the needs of its health care system. For example, from the mid-1960s the government invested increasingly in science infrastructure, including the establishment in 1965 of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNIC), which helped to train many scientists and engineers throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
As part of a drive to produce its own medicines, in the late 1970s the Cuban government sought help from UNIDO to build a plant to ramp up the production of pharmaceutical products. The UNIDO project enlisted the expertise of an Indian company, Sarabhai Chemicals, to establish Cuba's first chemical synthesis plant for the production of generic pharmaceutical products.
The plant, the Empresa Farmacéutica 8 de Marzo, was designed by UNIDO experts, equipped with Indian technology, and financed by contributions from India and the United Nations Development Programme, making it an early example of South-South and triangular cooperation.
The introduction of advanced pilot technology for the production of pharmaceutical compounds and the training provided for numerous Cuban experts built the conditions for the scaling up of generic medicine production in the following years, helping to create new jobs that were carried out by increasingly skilled Cuban chemists and engineers, many of them women.
