As Mod­er­na's search for African man­u­fac­tur­ing site ramps up, Ban­cel an­swers crit­i­cism about do­na­tions

Years be­fore the pan­dem­ic, Mod­er­na’s CEO Stéphane Ban­cel had thoughts of us­ing mR­NA to fight ne­glect­ed trop­i­cal dis­eases.

Now, while un­der the mag­ni­fy­ing glass of the US gov­ern­ment and pub­lic health or­ga­ni­za­tions alike, his com­pa­ny will try to slide in­to the of­ten-ne­glect­ed area to help with Covid-19 vac­cines too.

A week ago, Mod­er­na an­nounced that it would in­vest $500 mil­lion in an African man­u­fac­tur­ing plant, though it didn’t say ex­act­ly where that would be. Ban­cel said Thurs­day in a call with End­points News that his team has nar­rowed the search down to a fi­nal list “be­tween three and five coun­tries,” that the com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly as­sess­ing.

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