Pfizer to open regional office in Kazakhstan
According to Health Minister of Kazakhstan Ms. Azhar Giniyat, Pfizer will open a new regional center in Kazakhstan that will also cover Caucasus, Mongolia and other Central Asian countries.
What happened? Giniyat met with representatives of the Pfizer pharmaceutical company to discuss cooperation on contract manufacturing of the Prevnar 20 vaccine. The two sides also discussed the opening of the company’s office in Kazakhstan.
«We know that Pfizer will open a new regional office in our country to cover Caucasus, Central Asia and Mongolia. We are welcoming the move and we hope that in addition to the new office Pfizer will organize a logistical hub in Kazakhstan to provide all countries in the region with medical products and drugs,» Giniyat said at the meeting.
What else have the two sides discussed? The two sides also discussed a joint project aimed at contract manufacturing of medical products in Kazakhstan. According to the health minister, the joint project with Pfizer shows that Kazakhstan is the country ready for successful cooperation with global leaders in the pharmaceutical industry. The official also recalled that the task to start a joint project with a company from Big Pharma has been set by the president of Kazakhstan.
«Over the years of using Prevnar 13 in Kazakhstan, the number of reports of pneumonia among children has dropped by 50%, while the death rate from pneumonia among children has decreased by 20%. We hope that the localization of the contract manufacturing of Prevnar 20 will continue to facilitate the immunization of our children,» the health minister said.
In addition, the two sides have also expressed readiness to take part in joint scientific and educational projects. Cooperation in these spheres is going to strengthen Pfizer’s positions in Kazakhstan and facilitate the professional growth of researchers and workers in the pharmaceutical industry.
«We hope that Pfizer will support our export potential by promoting medical products produced in Kazakhstan in the markets of third-party countries and ensure that there are no similar manufacturing sites in other countries of Central Asia or the CIS more generally,» Giniyat noted.
The context. In December 2022, the global office of Pfizer agreed to localize the manufacturing of Prevenar-20 in Kazakhstan.
In February 2023, the country’s Ministry of Health and Foreign Ministry signed a road map with Ozgur Yaziyurt, regional president of Pfizer, aimed at localization of manufacturing of Prevnar 20, a vaccine designed to prevent the development of pneumococcus infection.
About the company. Pfizer, Inc. is an American transnational company, one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. In 2020, Pfizer and German BioNTech developed a vaccine against coronavirus and an anti-virus product called Paxlovid. As a result of the massive sales of these two products, the company reported record-high revenue in 2021 and 2022.
In early October 2023, Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the development of mRNA vaccines that, in turn, were used for the creation of vaccines by Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer.
