World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday that the organization has set up a hub in South Korea to train low- and middle-income countries to produce their own vaccines and therapies, expanding its COVID-19 vaccine project to a further five nations.

Tedros said the new hub will share mRNA technology being developed by the WHO and partners in South Africa, where scientists are working to recreate the COVID-19 vaccine made by Moderna Inc. That effort is taking place without Moderna's help.

"Vaccines have helped to change the course of the COVID-19 pandemic but this scientific triumph has been undermined by vast inequities in access to these life-saving tools," Tedros said.

The WHO said the facility in South Korea is already carrying out training for companies based in the country and will now accommodate trainees from other countries, and the shared technology would hopefully result not only in coronavirus vaccines, but would also be useful in making antibodies, insulin and treatments for diseases including malaria and cancer. 

The new training hub comes after the UN agency set up a technology transfer hub in Cape Town, South Africa, last year to give companies from low- and middle-income countries the know-how to produce COVID-19 vaccines based on mRNA technology.

It's the first time that the WHO has supported such unorthodox efforts to reverse-engineer a commercially-sold vaccine, making an end run around the pharmaceutical industry, which has largely prioritized supplying rich countries over poor in both sales and manufacturing.

Both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, makers of the two authorized mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, have declined to share their vaccine recipe or technological know-how with the WHO and its partners.

"Currently, bio-manufacturing training facilities are located mainly in high income countries, putting them out of reach for many lower income countries," Tedros said.

The global disparity in access to COVID-19 vaccines is enormous. Africa currently produces just 1 percent of the world's COVID-19 vaccines and only about 11 percent of its population is immunized. In contrast, a European nation like Portugal has had 84 percent of its population fully vaccinated, and over 59 percent of its people have also had a booster shot.

Last week, the WHO said six African countries - Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia - would receive the knowledge and technological know-how to make mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

Tedros said Wednesday that five more countries would now receive support from the South African hub: Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Serbia and Vietnam. The countries have been vetted by a group of experts and proved to have the capacity to move to the production stage relatively quickly.

Zain Rizvi, research director at the advocacy group Public Citizen, welcomed the news, saying the WHO's efforts will address the huge global demand for mRNA vaccines, which have proven to be arguably the most effective at curbing COVID-19.

"(The WHO) provides a stark contrast to the failures of Moderna and Pfizers of the world who have largely hoarded the technology," Rizvi said. "(The) WHO is charting an alternative course that is more open and transparent. But it still needs help."

Rizvi called for the Biden administration in particular to pressure international pharmaceutical companies to share their COVID-19 vaccine recipes and know-how.

(With input from AP, Reuters)