The first batch of influenza vaccine produced on Algerian soil will leave the production lines in July 2024, health authorities promise. This is thanks to an agreement between the public pharmaceutical group Saidal and the Pasteur Institute of Algeria, which will come into force immediately after the month of Ramadan. A problem whose importance was particularly highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic, local vaccine production is a priority for Algiers, the ambition being not only to produce the serums but also the raw materials necessary for their preparation, which will strengthen the country’s health security and boost its pharmaceutical industry.
The flu vaccine is only a first step, and advanced discussions are underway between the Pasteur Institute of Algeria and foreign suppliers for a technology transfer that will allow the country to expand its range of production. In the short term, Algeria – the first country in the Maghreb and Middle East region to cover 70% of its medicine needs – plans to meet 50% of its vaccine needs. This should halve the budget devoted to the implementation of the national vaccination program, estimated at 36 billion dinars (around 245 million euros) in the 2024 finance law.
Algeria’s largest public producer of medicines, Saidal will also begin producing, from June 2024, the raw material necessary for the manufacture of antibiotics. Saidal announces production with a total value of 850 million dollars. Knowing that the country’s needs are estimated at $250 million, the public group is therefore banking on exporting the majority of this production. Overall, the group estimates that the manufacturing of all these raw materials will reduce the import bill by $1.1 billion by 2026.
New drugs and increased turnover
Concerning the two main categories of products that the country does not produce – or not in sufficient quantities – and which it must import massively, namely oncological drugs and insulin, the CEO of Saidal, Wassim Kouidri, announced that they would begin to be produced within respective deadlines of 18 and 36 months, the group has planned an investment for this which will be around 11 billion dinars, spread over three years.
Today, Saidal has eight production sites producing 160 different drugs spread over 20 therapeutic classes, with an annual production capacity estimated at 130 million sales units in 2023. This number will increase to around 300 products over the year 2024, affirms the public group. Among the new products announced will be 30 drugs treating cardiovascular diseases, which should contribute to a further increase in Saidal’s turnover. This stood at 19 billion dinars in 2023 compared to 14.6 billion dinars in 2022, an increase of 35%.
Growth lever
In Algeria, the industrial fabric currently includes 203 private and public companies specializing in pharmaceutical production. These firms produce 3,327 drugs out of the 4,544 recorded in the national nomenclature, according to figures from the Ministry of Industry and Pharmaceutical Production. The launch of local insulin production has already made it possible to reduce the import bill for this product by almost 100 million euros in 2023, and the granting of a license to the insulin assembly plant Boufarik’s insulin pens should reduce the bill by an additional 44 million euros.
After having weighed on public finances for a long time due to the importance of imports, the pharmaceutical sector could therefore become, thanks to the strengthening of local industry, a lever for growth. The creation in 2020 of a Ministry of the Pharmaceutical Industry is part of the measures that have enabled this development, by contributing to the upgrade of the regulatory framework governing the sector. In particular for everything relating to price setting, the registration of pharmaceutical products, and the information system allowing the monitoring of stocks available on the market.
Unleash exports
In December 2023, the country also inaugurated a bioequivalence center, responsible for controlling the therapeutic equivalence between a generic drug and an original drug. The presentation of a bioequivalence study in the registration file for any new generic product is obligatory in Algeria, but due to the lack of specialized centers in this area, carrying out these studies was previously impossible. This constituted a considerable obstacle for Algerian producers who, to comply with regulations, had no other choice than to subcontract this important phase of drug development to foreign specialized organizations, mainly in India and Jordan. Long and expensive procedures.
Despite these advances, however, Algerian exports of pharmaceutical products remain, to date, at a disappointing level, with a total value of less than $3 million in 2023. The National Union of Pharmacy Operators (Unop) has therefore issued a list of recommendations in order to boost sales abroad, proposing both to intensify maritime trade with the major ports of West Africa and to lower the taxes and sanctions applied.
