A report to the Defence Department three years ago warned that Australia lacks the facilities and know-how to make its own pandemic vaccines.
The report analysed Australia’s ability to develop “medical countermeasures” including vaccines and drugs for threats including pandemics, radiation and chemical and biological weapons.
The report noted Australia had ‘limited’ manufacturing facilities and not enough experts who could take a drug from discovery through to a finished product.
We also lack national, coordinated leadership to turn good science into products, it said.
It called for Australia to urgently establish a national “medical countermeasures” initiative – a public–private organisation to work on vaccines and drugs.
The report’s lead author, Dr Craig Rayner, told the Sydney Morning Herald the report should have been a wake-up call for Australia to boost its vaccine and drug development infrastructure before a pandemic broke out.
“It is a little naive to think because the United States is doing a lot of the vaccine development, that they are going to put us right at the front of the queue,” Dr Rayner said.
“They are going to look after their own first.”
Another report to the government in February underlined the perils of Australia’s reliance on global supply chains for vital medicines.
The Institute for Integrated Economic Research report warned Australia is dangerously dependent on imported medicine and as a matter of national security must develop “some level of sovereign capability” to safeguard supply.
“Australia imports over 90 per cent of medicines and is at the end of a very long global supply chain, making the nation vulnerable to supply chain disruptions,” the report said.