Gardasil: developing countries are promised they will not have to wait!

[21 December 2006 - 11h20]

“It took 15 or 20 years for conventional vaccines to become accessible to developing countries. We are doing everything possible to ensure that in the case of Gardasil it will only be a matter of months”.

This response to the WHO by Merck, the inventor of the cervical cancer vaccine, was not slow in coming… “We shall be making this vaccine available at a spectacularly reduced price (compared with the price in wealthy countries – editor’s note) to organisations such as GAVI and others whose job it is to distribute vaccines in developing countries.” These were the words of Margaret G. McGlynn – who heads up the vaccine division of the American pharmaceutical company Merck – during a site visit to the Marcy l’Etoile production plant in Lyons organised by the Sanofi Pasteur MSD joint-venture.

It was an eminently political visit led by Jean-François Dehecq and Richard T. Clark, the respective chairmen of Sanofi Aventis and Merck and Co., and took place in the presence of representatives of the international press. However, there’s no telling what the companies’ representatives might mean by a “spectacularly reduced” price. Even where humanitarian issues are concerned, business is business and, as observers have acknowledged, there’s no reason why should this be a problem in fact. It is nevertheless important to know that steps are being taken in this direction.

Mc Glynn also confirmed that already, “proposals have been put to the GAVI Board based on an extensive financial study. The Board is due to consider this in the very near future. All of which takes time, but keeping this period as short as possible is the very highest priority for us”. The WHO and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) underlined last week that the price of Gardasil “will constitute a serious challenge to its rapid introduction to the places where it is needed most – the poorest countries”. Now the two organisations have received their response … and a promise, the implementation of which they will certainly follow very closely.

Source : our special correspondent in Lyons, 20 December 2006

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