Pneumococcal vaccine gets financial boost

• Advance Market Commitment to speed delivery adopted Global Health Partners (GHP) have donated US$1.5 billion (Rwf855 billion) to adopt an innovative Advance Market Commitment (AMC) approach for accelerating the roll out of pneumococcal vaccine in developing countries. According to a statement from the Ministry of Health, the partners anticipate that the AMC pilot project will encourage development and production of this vaccine which is tailored to the needs of most African countries. “AMC will create market incentives for vaccine makers to invest the considerable sums required to conduct research or build manufacturing capacity. Pharmaceutical companies normally have little interest in investing in research, development and manufacturing of vaccines for the developing world because countries usually cannot afford them,” the statement says Through this project however, donors are committing funds to guarantee the price of the vaccines once they have been developed and manufactured, thus creating the potential for a viable future market. “Currently the existing pneumococcal vaccine is sold at over US$70(Rwf40,000) in industrialized countries however with this new initiative, the long term price for developing countries will be US$ 3.50(Rwf1900),” further reads the statement. Minister of Health, Dr. Richard Sezibera, welcomed this venture expressing his optimism that under the AMC project, vaccines for other diseases can be produced too. “This innovative mechanism, now launched for pneumococcal vaccine will hopefully extend to other diseases and this will enable those who need vaccines in the developing world to access them.” “It gives industry - including industry in the developing world - certainty of a market and reasonable profit while on the other, offering the countries like mine the opportunity to deal with the major health challenges affecting our people,” Sezibera said. The AMC development comes a month after government officially added this vaccine to the national immunization strategy. Ends

National

Pneumococcal vaccine gets financial boost