Cuba and Vietnam have established a joint venture for biopharmaceutical development

In the presence of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, and Deputy Minister of Health of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Do Xuan Tuyen, an agreement was signed yesterday by which the Joint Venture between the Cuban BCF S.A., of BioCubaFarma, and the Vietnamese Genfarma Holdings was established.

The ceremony followed a meeting between the two leaders, in which the head of state assured that the creation of the company marks a milestone in the business and economic-commercial relations between the two countries.

Díaz-Canel valued that the event “fulfills the expectation we have in the consensus we reached with the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, To Lam, during his visit to Cuba last year”.

The formalization of this Cuban-Vietnamese joint venture, of high technology, in the biotechnological and pharmaceutical branch, will have mutual benefits, and will produce important medicines for both Vietnam and Cuba, said Díaz-Canel.

He highlighted and thanked “the very agile way in which this whole negotiation process has been developed to arrive today at the signing of the constitution of the joint venture; very serious and intense work has been done by both parties, and I am confident that it will be a good company, which will honor the special nature of our relations, a company that will succeed, and a company that will also demonstrate the way in which we can jointly carry out mutually beneficial projects”.

He stressed the importance of moving forward, in parallel, “with the regulatory elements, so that, in the shortest possible time, with all the rigors involved, these drugs can be authorized”, and no time is lost in making them available to the Vietnamese people.

For his part, vice minister of health of the sister nation described as an honor to witness the signing of the agreement, just in the year that the two nations celebrate 65 years of diplomatic relations.

He expressed his gratitude for the possibility of meeting with the Cuban President, and acknowledged the significance of the meetings held since his arrival in Cuba, both with representatives of the Ministry of Public Health and Cecmed, the Regulatory Authority of Medicines, Equipment and Medical Devices.

From those exchanges, he said, several possibilities for cooperation were identified, three of them of utmost importance for Vietnam: the development and implementation of family medicine; cutting mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS infection, which Cuba achieved in 2015; as well as the development of biotechnology, in the manufacture of medicines and other products in Vietnam.

At the signing of the constitutive document, which was attended by party, government and business authorities from both nations, Mayda Mauri Pérez, president of the BioCubaFarma Business Group, referred that the “joint venture will have as its essential mission the transfer of technologies of biological and pharmaceutical products from Cuba, and will promote in Vietnam the realization of research and development activities of biological products and high-tech medicines”.

She added that the “alliance will allow exporting products manufactured in our country, with the purpose of generating income that will be used in the development and production of medicines for the Cuban population”, being in the interest of both parties that the company has an international projection, with exports to different nations in Asia and the world.

The President of BioCubaFarma pointed out that a new stage is beginning for the joint development of projects in the biotechnological and pharmaceutical industry.