Wealthy Nations Announce Plan to Develop and Pay for Vaccines

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February 10, 2007

Wealthy Nations Announce Plan to Develop and Pay for Vaccines

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/world/europe/10vaccine.html

ROME, Feb. 9 — Officials from a handful of wealthy nations initiated a

long-awaited plan on Friday to support and finance the development of

vaccines for children in poorer countries, and to purchase the vaccine

once it is produced.

The first phase of the program, which is called the Advance Market

Commitment, will cover the pneumococcal vaccine, a shot that is effective

at preventing deadly pneumonia in children. It is not well suited for use

in the developing world because it is expensive and, in its current

version, does not protect against some strains common in poor countries.

The program, to be financed through donations from the governments, will

cost $1.5 billion and is expected to prevent 5.4 million deaths among

children by 2030, according to the World Bank and GAVI, the global vaccine

fund that provided technical assistance. A pneumococcal vaccine for

children has been widely used in the United States and other developed

nations since the late 1990s.

Under the new plan, led by the Italian government, the developed nations

will promise to purchase vaccines in the future on behalf of poor

countries that request them, provided that the vaccines meet the plan’s

standards. The pool of money provides incentive for drug makers to create

vaccines tailored for use in the developing world as well as to increase

production capacity to accommodate the need.

Normally, the market does not provide such incentives because most poor

countries cannot afford the vaccines on their own. The countries involved

in the Advance Market Commitment project decided to start with the

pneumococcal vaccine because it could be brought to market quickly.

The program “creates market incentives where the private market fails,”

said Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, the Italian finance minister, at an assembly

gathered in Rome to introduce the program. Also at the gathering were

Queen Rania of Jordan; Gordon Brown, Britain’s chancellor of the

Exchequer; and D. Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank.

Italy, Canada, Norway, Britain and Russia have pledged money. “This day is

a great one for the poor women and children of the world,” said

wick Ntaba, a former health minister of Malawi.

The Advance Market Commitment is one of several new programs by wealthy

nations intended to bring better health care to the developing world,

particularly Africa, which is being devastated by H.I.V. and AIDS.

Another initiative, championed by the French, uses an airline tax to buy

medicines for poor nations.

But this is the first to focus on a vaccine, which aims to prevent

disease, in this case pneumonia. In the future, the group hopes to start

similar efforts for vaccines against malaria and other diseases.

“It is a real challenge to see if we can come up with new mechanisms to

make vaccines available and affordable in developing countries,” said Tido

von Schoen-Angerer, director of the campaign for essential medicines at

Doctors Without Borders.

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