Bill Gates Investing $40 Million for mRNA Vaccine Development in Africa

The investment will fund new technologies that cut down mRNA vaccine costs by over 50 percent.

Bill Gates speaks onstage at the TIME100 Summit 2022 at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, on June 7, 2022. Jemal Countess/Getty Images for TIME

The Gates Foundation is spending $40 million on countries in Africa and other economically backward nations to produce new mRNA vaccines in efforts to prevent against diseases like tuberculosis and malaria.

On Monday, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $40 million in funding to “advance access to mRNA research and vaccine manufacturing technology that will support low-and middle-income countries’ (LMICs) capacity to develop high-quality, lifesaving vaccines at scale,” according to an Oct. 9 press release. The $40 million will be spent on boosting access to a low-cost mRNA research and manufacturing platform developed by Belgium-based Quantoom Biosciences.

While $20 million will go to Quantoom, two research institutes in Africa—located in Senegal and South Africa—will get $5 million each. The remaining $10 million will go to vaccine manufacturers from low- and middle-income countries.

Quantoom’s platform can lead to a more than 50 percent drop in mRNA vaccine development costs compared to traditional mRNA technology, the release said.

The foundation argues that mRNA vaccines have “simpler research and manufacturing processes” compared to traditional vaccines. As such, expanding the technology to countries like South Africa and Senegal can lead to the development of low-cost mRNA vaccines for diseases like malaria and tuberculosis.

The $40 million funding adds to the foundation’s previous investment worth $55 million in mRNA manufacturing technology.

“Putting innovative mRNA technology in the hands of researchers and manufacturers in Africa and around the world will help ensure more people benefit from next-generation vaccines,” said Dr. Muhammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s coordinating minister of health and social welfare and a global expert on vaccines.

“This collaboration is an encouraging step that will increase access to critical health technologies and help African countries develop vaccines that meet the needs of their people.”

The Gates foundation’s new investment comes as mRNA technology has sparked numerous safety concerns. During a testimony at the European Parliament last month, cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough said that everything he has learned about mRNA vaccines has been “horrifying.”

“There’s not a single study showing that the messenger RNA is broken down” in the human body once it is injected, he said. “There’s not a study showing it leaves the body.” Since the vaccines are “made synthetically, it cannot be broken down.”

For the COVID-19 vaccine, the mRNA sequence was copied from the virus’s spike protein, which was considered at least one of the aspects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that made it so harmful to the body.

“We have the spike protein—the lethal protein from the [COVID-19] vaccines found in the human body after vaccination—circulating at least for six months, if not longer. And if people take an injection in another six months, there’s another installation in more circulating potentially lethal protein,” Dr. McCullough said of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.

Scientist Drew Weissman, who won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his role in developing the mRNA technology, warned in a 2018 paper that not only did clinical trials of mRNA vaccines produce “more modest [results] in humans than was expected based on animal models,” but that the “side effects were not trivial.”

Potential Side Effects from COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine

A recent study published in Frontiers in Immunology has raised concerns about potential alterations to base functions of a person’s immune system by Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

A teenager receives a dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine at Clalit Health Services in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Jan. 23, 2021. Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

The researchers looked at children who had received COVID-19 vaccinations and found that there was “a general decrease in cytokine and chemokine responses” to bacteria, fungi, and non-COVID viruses. Cytokines and chemokines are proteins secreted by the cells of the immune system.

“Our findings suggest SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination could alter the immune response to other pathogens, which cause both vaccine-preventable and non-vaccine-preventable diseases,” the researchers wrote.

“This is particularly relevant in children as they: have extensive exposure to microbes at daycare, school, and social occasions; are often encountering these microbes for the first time; and receive multiple vaccines as part of routine childhood vaccination schedules.”

In an interview with The Epoch Times, Andrew Bostom, a cardiovascular research expert and retired professor of medicine at Brown University, said that the study suggests repeated mRNA vaccinations could “predispose children to both viral and bacterial infections.”

Heart Issues

Multiple studies have confirmed links between both mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and COVID-19 infections with heart problems.

A recent study from Japan investigated people who received a Pfizer or Moderna mRNA shot. They found that such people had higher levels of fluorodeoxyglucose F18 (FDG) in their heart, spleen, and liver compared to unvaccinated individuals.

FDG is a glucose analogue and marker of inflammation in the body. Higher FDG levels indicate heart inflammation, the authors wrote in the study.

Another study found that Moderna’s mRNA-1273 vaccine presented a higher risk of damage to myocardium, the middle muscular layer of the heart.

Getting a jab was associated with “elevation of markers of myocardial injury” in about one out of 35 individuals (2.8 percent), the study said. In a generally healthy population, this level would be around 1 percent, it stated.

The researchers followed the subjects who experienced adverse effects post vaccination for 30 days and found that half of them had unusually high levels of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T, which is an indicator of subclinical heart damage.

Amid overwhelming evidence of mRNA vaccines leading to heart complications, some studies also suggest that the COVID-19 infection may be more dangerous than the vaccines.

An Aug. 2022 study published in the American Heart Association (AHA) looked at individuals above 13 years of age who had received at least one dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna. The subjects were admitted to a hospital or died from myocarditis between December 1, 2020, and December 15, 2021.

“Overall, the risk of myocarditis is greater after SARS-CoV-2 infection than after COVID-19 vaccination and remains modest after sequential doses including a booster dose of BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine (Pfizer),” it said.

However, “the risk of myocarditis after vaccination is higher in younger men, particularly after a second dose of the mRNA-1273 vaccine (Moderna).”

Last month, Florida’s Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, advised people under 65 years of age not to take the new COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, and for those over 65 to discuss risks of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine with their doctor to decide on their health approach during the pandemic.

“There’s essentially no evidence for it. There’s been no clinical trial done in human beings showing that it benefits people, there’s been no clinical trial showing that it is a safe product for people,” he said during a news conference.

“There are multiple studies now from around the world, Brazil, Australia, United States that show that over time these vaccines, these mRNA COVID-19 products actually increase your chances of contracting COVID-19.”

Marina Zhang contributed to the report.