SOUTH AFRICA—The iThemba Labs, in Cape Town South Africa, with a US$ 32 Million facilitation from the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), has launched the South Africa Isotope Facility (SAIF).
Higher Education, science, and innovation minister, Blade Nzimande at the launch noted that SAIF was to conduct advanced research and training radiopharmaceuticals.
The facility will also increase the production capacity for radioisotopes, including new-generation novel radioisotopes.
SAIF will be managed by the department’s entity, the National Research Foundation (NRF), a flagship program at iThemba Labs in Cape Town.
iThemba Labs has produced radioisotopes for the local and international nuclear medicine and research fraternity for more than 30 years.
It is one of only a few places in South Africa where the complete manufacturing process to produce medicine takes place.
Currently, about 5000 South African patients a year benefit from the supply, and it is expected that these numbers could increase by a factor of five to seven with the increase in production capacity through SAIF and the availability of a new cohort of isotopes.
The facility includes production facilities, chemical processing, quality assurance, and control, filling and packaging under sterile conditions, and end-to-end logistics, marketing, and sales.
“The research facility also supplies certain medical isotopes for South African nuclear medicine clinics, which cannot be supplied by anyone else or even imported now,” said the minister.
In addition, SAIF acquired a dedicated cyclotron with associated infrastructure for producing radioisotopes, thus freeing the existing separated sector cyclotron for full-time research and training.
Already twenty-one postgraduate students have already been targeted to study at the facility.
Orif Mike Sathekge, Head of Nuclear Medicine at the University of Pretoria Steve Biko Academic Hospital said, “SAIF increases the access to what is really the leading modality of treating cancer, but also the leading modality of detecting diseases very, very early.”
Sathekge also noted that the new facility will also be giving researchers opportunities to come up with new radioisotopes that will treat many other spectrums of other cancers and of course and help researchers to monitor what they are treating.
Cancer in South Africa, Improving Access to Treatment
SAIF a flagship program at iThemba LABS is a response to the growing challenge of cancer, which the World Health Organisation expects to become the leading cause of death in Africa by 2030.
Radioisotope therapy is used in treating cancer by targeting cancerous cells while causing minimal damage to surrounding healthy cells.
The facility’s launch comes as the World Health Organisation (WHO) predicts that cancer is likely to become the largest killer on the continent within the next seven years.
Ministry of Health, in South Africa, the five most common kinds of cancer in order of incidence, are breast, prostate, cervical, lung, and colorectal cancer. Of these, the leading cause of death is lung cancer.
Lancet’s Global Burden of Disease Study notes that Cancer is now the fifth leading cause of death in Africa which warrants further investments into the cancer burden in the African region.
High cancer mortality rates in Africa demand a holistic approach toward cancer control and management, including, but not limited to, boosting cancer awareness, adopting primary and secondary prevention, mitigating risk factors, improving cancer infrastructure, and timely treatment.
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