LONDON, (Reuters) – International vaccines group GAVI has struck a deal for bulk buying rotavirus shots from GlaxoSmithKline and Merck which cuts the price by two-thirds and will allow poorer countries access to them at around $5 per course. (Figures in US dollars)
The vaccines, GSK’s Rotarix and Merck’s Rotateq, combat the main cause of diarrhoea – the second-largest killer of children under the age of five worldwide.
Because rotavirus-related diarrhoea kills more than 500,000 children a year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended in 2009 that all countries should include rotavirus vaccines in national immunisation programmes, but many developing countries struggle to afford them.
The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) said yesterday its cut-price deal would allow it “to respond to ever-increasing demand from developing countries” and provide the shots this year for 3 million children in eight poor countries. By 2016, GAVI said it planned to roll out the vaccines in more than 40 of the world’s poorest countries, immunising more than 70 million children.
Around 95 percent of the contracted supply of 132 million doses will be procured at a cost of $5 per two-dose course, GAVI said in a statement. This is a two-thirds price cut compared to the previous lowest price offered to GAVI of $15 a course. In the United States, the same vaccine course costs public institutions $177 and private health providers $213.
GAVI is a Geneva-based public-private partnership backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the WHO, the World Bank, UNICEF, international donor governments and others. It funds bulk-buy immunisation campaigns for poorer nations that can’t afford vaccines at rich-world prices.
