Vaccines getting to poor nations faster

Arthur Max

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — The timeline for getting new vaccines to poor countries that need them most is being shortened from decades to less than two years, an alliance of U.N. agencies and government and private groups said.

Vaccines for diseases such as hepatitis B, measles and polio have typically taken 15 to 20 years from the time they are developed in Western countries until they are available in poor countries.

But according to the GAVI Alliance, a vaccine licensed last year in the United States and Europe against rotavirus, which causes diarrhea and dehydration, will take less than two years from the laboratory to village clinics with new international funding.

Rosamund Lewis, a program director for the Geneva-based GAVI Alliance, said last month that the organization raised $3.6 billion since its creation in 2000. It has since helped to buy vaccines for more than 70 developing countries to immunize the majority of their children.

Immunization rates in those countries increased to 73 percent from 40 percent in 2000, Lewis said in an interview before addressing the Fifth European Congress on Tropical Medicine and International Health.

Lewis described a radical makeover in delivering vaccines at prices poor countries can afford.

Vaccine producers slash prices when guaranteed a market base of millions of users, she said. The vaccine against some forms of bacterial meningitis, which costs $60 per dose in the West, is available for $3.50 when bought in bulk by UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund which is part of GAVI.

“We created a market where one didn’t exist before by saying we have the money for these countries to buy vaccines,” Lewis said. “Pharmaceutical companies have an incentive to reduce the cost because there’s a much larger market out there, and it makes them look good.”

The program was expected to accelerate further with a new financing mechanism created last year in which seven countries — Brazil, France, Italy, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Britain — issue 20-year bonds and make the proceeds available to GAVI.

Other partners in the alliance are the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 12 donor governments, and academic and nongovernmental institutions which help countries assess their needs. The organization was formerly known as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

The board that determines which vaccines to offer already is considering ordering the anti-cervical cancer vaccine, which was only approved for sale by most Western governments last year. It would be the first vaccine targeting young women rather than children.

About 3 million people die each year from diseases for which vaccines exist, nearly all of them in the developing world, GAVI says.

With guaranteed markets, more producers outside the industrial world are entering the field, with companies in India, China, Indonesia, South Africa and Brazil making vaccines. Competition should further drive down the price.

(Associated Press)