MSF calls on GSK and Pfizer to slash pneumo vaccine price to $5

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has called on UK pharma major GlaxoSmithKline (LSE: GSK) and US pharma giant Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) to cut the price of the pneumococcal vaccine to $5 per child in developing countries.

The call comes ahead of a vaccination donor conference in Berlin, Germany, as MSF releases the second edition of its vaccine pricing report, The Right Shot: Bringing Down Barriers to Affordable and Adapted Vaccines. The report shows that in the poorest countries, the price to vaccinate a child is now 68 times more expensive than it was in 2001, with many parts of the world unable to afford new high-priced vaccines like that against pneumococcal disease, which kills about one million children each year.

Rohit Malpani, director of policy and analysis for MSF’s Access Campaign, said: “The price to fully vaccinate a child is 68 times more expensive than it was just over a decade ago, mainly because a handful of big pharmaceutical companies are overcharging donors and developing countries for vaccines that already earn them billions of dollars in wealthy countries. Donors will be asked to put an additional $7.5 billion dollars on the table to pay for vaccines in poor countries for the next five years, with over one third of that going to pay for one vaccine alone, the high-priced pneumococcal vaccine; just think of how much further taxpayer money could go to vaccinate more children if vaccines were cheaper. We think it’s time for GSK and Pfizer to do their part to make vaccines more affordable for countries in the long term, because the discounts the companies are offering today are just not good enough.”