Drug manufacturers are stepping up to the plate in the race to provide low-cost vaccines to low-income nations in a global effort to sustain supply and allow greater accessibility to life-saving drugs at low-threshold prices. Diarrhoea, caused by rotavirus, is the second leading cause of high children under 5 mortality rates, killing more than half a million children each year. Vaccines like Rotatrix that work to immunize children from rotavirus are now being offered to GAVI by GSK at up to 67% off the current market price, reducing the cost of an immunizing dose to 5 bucks per child.
In 2009, the WHO recommended that all countries should include rotavirus vaccines in national vaccination programs, but many poorer countries struggle to afford them.
GAVI, which funds bulk-buy vaccination programs for nations that can’t afford shots at Western prices, has committed to help fund rotavirus vaccine introduction in at least 40 of the world’s poorest countries by 2015.
However, funding is tight and there is a $3.7 billion gap that impedes on the longevity of this project through 2015. Thankfully,
[t]he price cuts, offered by both generic and branded drugmakers including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Johnson & Johnson’s Crucell and Sanofi-Aventis’ Sanofi Pasteur, should help the alliance narrow a $3.7 billion funding gap for its commitments up until 2015.
In addition to deep discounts on rotavirus vaccines, pentavalent vaccines which combine five different vaccines (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, and Haemophilus influenzae type b) into one shot, are also on the list of drugs to be discounted in the near-term.
A great thing about this long term endeavor is that it encourages drug makers world wide to pump out vaccines, engendering integrated global pharmaceutical efforts to sustain supply to developing nations. However, it is important that developing nations begin and continue to take the initiative in developing a stronger health system such that they can also develop life-saving vaccines and loosen their dependence on external resources.
