16 Feb GAVI Chair Calls For Greater Reductions In Vaccine Prices For Developing Countries
The Kaiser Family Foundation
On Monday, the same day the GAVI Alliance helped oversee the roll out of a routine pneumococcal vaccine in Kenya, GAVI chairman Dagfinn Hoybraten highlighted the need for greater reductions in vaccine prices in developing countries during an interview with Reuters, the news service reports. The piece examines the funding mechanism in place to finance the pneumococcal vaccines, known as Advance Market Commitment (AMC), as well as the budget shortfall facing the group (Kelland, 2/14).
The AMC “has already earmarked $1.5bn from international donors, persuading two large producers [GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer] to guarantee delivery of 300m doses of their pneumococcal vaccines, which were developed for rich countries, at a deep discount to western prices,” the Financial Times writes. “Under the terms of the AMC, first discussed in 2006, GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer commit to providing their competing vaccines Synflorix and Prevenar for an initial price of $7 per dose, falling later to a maximum of $3.50,” the news service adds.