Working hard and fighting for life (+ Photos)

"We’re focused on the Abdala issue, working hard, barehanded," stated Antonio Emilio Vallín García, general director of AICA Pharmaceutical Laboratories, Monday afternoon, speaking with Party First Secretary and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, on his third visit to the facility.

Vallín updated those present on the principal tasks currently occupying AICA, a pharmaceutical company producing more than 190 different drugs, 40% of those included on the national list of basic medications.

"Lots of young people here!" commented Díaz-Canel upon arriving at AICA's main site, where he talked about current salary incentives for workers, and asked how the expansion of productive capacity for vaccines is progressing, since, he said, "What we need is to vaccinate more people."

The center includes 16 production lines in five facilities, which have a direct impact on the country’s public health programs.

This year has been complicated and difficult from the operational point of view, Vallín explained to the President. Thanks to a recapitalization of the entire production area, AICA, he said, is now “renovated, with a high level of consistency," in manufacturing products needed to confront COVID-19, and maintain availability of basic medications.

Regarding the Abdala vaccine, Vallín reported that more than 46 batches have been produced, despite the lack of supplies and certain materials, made possible by the creativity of all those who are part of this critical mission, he said.

Speaking of the rigor with which they have assumed the Abdala production process, he reported that the Center for State Control of Medicines, Medical Equipment and Devices (Cecmed), "conducted a detailed inspection, checking batch by batch, file by file," and noted as a strength of the facility, “the consistency achieved in the production process."