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Hi everyone ! This is @afromedwoman aka Dr Nikki Kay. While digest the vaccine knowledge from @denvern3 thought I’d share my journey about moving to Singapore. I’ve been living in Asia for 12 years now, and thought some may be interested about opportunities this side of the world https://twitter.com/mentorshipzim/status/1355282706284900352
They say we are living in an Asian century so I think Africans can learn a lot from living here at least for some time. I would recommend for global minded citizens in Zim or in the diaspora to explore Asia - beyond China, which is most in Zim hear of most of.
I did my BA in Anthropology and Chemistry on scholarship in the US. I went to what is called a liberal arts college where it was req to take courses outside your major in arts, sciences, languages, humanities. I had to take pre-med classes at the same time to apply for med school
My plan was to do med school in the US but i quickly realised it was much harder for non-US citizens to receive scholarship for MD vs for undergrad or PhD. Then by miracle one of the schools I had applied for (Duke) told me about a new campus they were opening in Singapore.
Duke-NUS is a collab of the US Duke and National University of Singapore. The first post-grad US style med school in the country (other med schools here are UK style). I received a full tuition scholarship, with a service agreement to work for the SG govt for 5yrs after grad.
It’s difficult at first to sign a doc to be in one country for 4 years an then 5 years after school when you’ve never been there. But full tuition scholarship for med school at a world class uni was an opp i could not just let go. And hey 5 years guaranteed job w/ normal pay 
12 years later seems the years just flew by. And now I’m a specialist in Public Health medicine. I wish I had known more about opportunities in Asia when l was younger. As I’ve had the chance to travel around this region, it’s really an adventure even after so long.
First I wanted to share opport for high school. Here in SG is one school UWC with global campuses that accepts strong students with great O’Levels. UWC grads can be found at so many prestigious universities around the world includ mine. To apply from Zim: https://www.zw.uwc.org/
For young grads I would encourage you to take adv of several sponsored opp to come and learn Asian languages. Even if your goal is to further edu in the usual US, Europe etc speaking an Asian language is always good for CV and give you lead for Asian work postings in the future.
One great program is hosted by the govt of Taiwan to learn Mandarin called ,Huayu Enrichment Scholarship. I can’t find the link for a liaison office in Zim but here’s in the SA one they may have details for Zim students as well https://www.roc-taiwan.org/za_en/post/5695.html
Taiwan is extremely safe and very similar to SG, well organised country. They also offer scholarships for post grads students looking to further their education and many courses are in English. Did I mention they also have great food ? https://en.mofa.gov.tw/cp.aspx?n=A5C28AD214C3FD7C
I understand there are lots of opp in China as well , but none that I am familiar with. I would not want to forward you guys any scams (of which there are many) please be careful as you look for opp out there. Reach out to other Twimbos in those countries makes sure not scam.
So far I know of 3 Africans who graduated med school here i Singapore not sure if they don’t get in or they don’t apply. Worth a shot if you have good results and looking for med school oops. For post grad check out Duke-NUS, for A level grads check out NUS Med and NTU medicine
For this looking for undergrad oops- Yale-NUS program. This is bringing the liberal arts model of educ to Singapore in collab w/ Yale (US). Students have opp to to visiting semester at Yale and they do accept a wide range of students with scholarship. https://www.yale-nus.edu.sg/
I’ll pause here and see if anyone has any specific questions about studying or working in Singapore or other Asian countries that I may be able to answer. Then can go into the politics and economics of COVID-19 vaccines later :)
please excuse my typos. I’m kind of multi-tasking today as I am running a clinic :)
Dropping some more opportunities as they pop in my head. A lot of prestigious Chinese fellowships for grads. Yenching scholars receive full fellowship to study for 1 year Masters at the prestigious Peking University. They’ve been a few Zimbo scholars too https://yenchingacademy.pku.edu.cn
Thanks for engaging with the thread guys. I’m going to shift into some COVID-19 content now. I’ll add more opportunities in Asia I think of at the very end and keep asking me any questions you have about my posts above.
Dr Denver shared a lot of knowledge hope you’re convinced that we have a few safe and effective vaccines that can help us get end this pandemic. Unfortunately, right now no vaccines in sight yet for Africa. I want to go into how these wonderful vaccines can be fairly given to ALL
Good news is that total of 600 million doses doses have been secured for Africa through 3 main paths
1) COVAX facility
2) AU procurement
3) Individual country procurement
I’ll go through each of these and the current progress and challenges and what it means for Zim
1) COVAX facility
2) AU procurement
3) Individual country procurement
I’ll go through each of these and the current progress and challenges and what it means for Zim
COVAX was created in 2020 to pool global resources to support R&D, manuf of vaccines and negotiating a good price for them. Less poor countries fully funded. Kinda poor like Zim pay something (it’s not a ‘charity’ facility) and the rich would self-pay all https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/covax-explained
So far, COVAX has guaranteed each country in the facility vaccine for at least 20%. So for Zim would be 3 million doses and govt reports that this would be at a cost of US$25 million to be partially financed though an Afreximbank facility.
So if we have COVAX how come Africa still hasn’t got ANY vaccines ?
Rich countries prioritised making their own bilateral deals with companies not COVAX so most global production is tied up in fulfilling these orders. AU deals came much later than those for EU, US, UK and Canada
Rich countries prioritised making their own bilateral deals with companies not COVAX so most global production is tied up in fulfilling these orders. AU deals came much later than those for EU, US, UK and Canada
To give you a sense of just how much rich countries have pre-ordered. some countries have vaccines more than 5 times their populations! As long as those doses ar held by them can’t be given to others. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/29/canada-and-uk-among-countries-with-most-vaccine-doses-ordered-per-person
Another reason for delay in COVAX is that for vaccine need to be pre-approved by WHO. So far only Pfizer had submitted all the data for their vaccines to WHO. Only under exceptional situ can COVAX procure vaccines not listed by WHO with authorisation from stringent regulators.
Why don’t we just make our own vaccines in Africa? First, the “recipe” of how to make these vaccines is owned by the companies who protect that knowledge through patents. You can’t make these specific vaccines that have ben shown to be effective without that patented knowledge
Companies and some rich countries have resisted efforts to make these patents available to generic manufacturers in LMIC. India and South Africa have even raised this issue within the UN and at WTO. To force companies to be flexible with patents during the global emergency
Besides WTO TRIPS flexibilities that SA and India calling for, WHO created the Covid Technology Access Pool to encourage companies to share their intellectual property to allow ramp up of manufacturing around the world. So far, no company has contributed https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2021-01-29/folly-hoarding-knowledge-covid-19-age
And even let’s say if we did have the intellectual property for the vaccines. We do not have as much capacity for vaccine manuf in Africa so we would still be reliant on manufacturers in Asia and Latin America. Only 5 African countries have limited capacity to make vaccines
It takes decades to build up vaccine manuf capacity needed for Africa. I hope as a continent this crisis pushes us to make the necessary investments in science and technology to make us more secure in the future. We have plans on paper, but action dololo https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/september-2020/how-africa-can-manufacture-meet-its-own-pharmaceutical-needs
So given IP not freely available, Doses hoarded by rich countries, COVAX only giving 20% and Africa has no manufacturing capacity the rest of the doses will have to be negotiated. AU set up the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team to do just that https://www.africanews.com/2021/01/19/africa-medical-supplies-platform-amsp-opens-covid-19-vaccines-pre-orders-for-55-african-union-member-states/
So far AU and African CDC have negotiated 600 million doses for Africa. Mostly AstraZeneca (AZ) has been ordered. But given DRAMA happening in the EU right now w/ AZ which, I’ll go over, we have to watch and see of these promised doses will come soon https://www.google.com.sg/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN29X1CE
Despite pre-ordering so many vaccine doses, vaccination in Europe and N.America has faced a slow start partly due to delays in vaccine production. In EU, there have even been accusations AstraZeneca (a British-Swedish company) has been sending EU doses to the recently Brexited UK
Things have gotten quite heated between the EU Commission and AstraZeneca amidst allegations of breach of contract. The EU has even threatened to block the export of vaccines made in the EU. https://apnews.com/article/europe-health-coronavirus-pandemic-19edc409c6f6a1bd31b69f58f5e1a0a6
It’s not clear yet if this standoff between AstraZeneca and the EU will affect the orders for the AU. Most of the doses for AU are actually being made for AZ through a contract with the Serum Institute of India so this would not be affected by EU export ban
This week we got the good news that both Novavax and Johnson & Johnson preliminary data shows they are safe and effective and will be submitted to the FDA for authorisation. We hope that these companies will also submit necessary data to WHO so we have more options through COVAX
Why is WHO pre-approval so important for access to African countries ? Many of our regulators have greater confidence when reviewing products that have already been vetted first round by a reliable, independent and politically neutral body such as WHO.
So even if we have a deal through AU, that WHO pre-approval for regulatory purposes will be very important especially for smaller countries whose regulators have limited resources. The vaccine cannot be given to citizens without regulatory approval even if the deal is in the bag
WHO pre-approval doesn’t mean our national regulators won’t have any work. They still have to verify manufacturing of vaccines is up to standard, test quality of individual batches of vaccines delivered and collect data to monitor for any side effects of vaccines after approved
So this thread has just been about getting vaccine to Harare airport, the easier part. The bigger question is if the ground is even ready to deliver those safely vaccines to people. WHO has made a readiness tool for countries to assess and remedy any gaps https://www.who.int/initiatives/act-accelerator/covax/covid-19-vaccine-country-readiness-and-delivery
