ArticlePLOS global public health2024
'Our project, your problem?' A case study of the WHO's mRNA technology transfer programme in South Africa.
Article in PLOS global public health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Vaccine equity in Africa: a rapid review of policy, legal and governance frameworks to improve research and development.Frontiers in health services · 2026Pooled it
- Decolonizing global health governance through knowledge: a perspective on epistemic governance.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Innovations in reagent manufacturing to support the global diagnostics supply chain.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- How Can We Prevent a Resurgence of Vaccine Nationalism?International journal of health policy and management · 2025Article
- Rupturing the Temporality of Pharmaceutical Patents: A Sketch for a New Temporal Economy of Pharmaceutical Markets.The Journal of law, medicine & ethics : a journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics · 2025Article
- Technology transfer, intellectual property, and the fight for the soul of WHO.PLOS global public health · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In June 2021 the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) launched an mRNA technology transfer programme. With a South African consortium serving as the hub, the programme aimed to increase vaccine manufacturing capacity in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in view of the "vaccine apartheid" that was observed during COVID-19. Following Clarke's "situational analysis," the present study assessed whether the mRNA programme differs from the approach and practices that comprise current biopharmaceutical production. Numerous documentary sources, including legal agreements underpinning the programme, funding agreements, and patent filings, were reviewed. Semi-structured interviews with 35 individuals, ranging from the programme's architects and university scientists to representatives from LMIC vaccine manufacturers taking part in the programme were also conducted. While the mRNA programme may improve the sharing of knowledge, other design features, in particular, weak conditionalities around product affordability, participants' freedom to contract with third parties, and acceptance of market-based competition, are in line with the status quo. Further, WHO and MPP's tight control over the programme evokes the dynamics that are often in play in global health, to the detriment of empowering LMIC-based manufacturers to generate mRNA products in response to local health needs.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.