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Vaccines – lowering prices will save lives
The GAVI Alliance – the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation – has welcomed an undertaking by two Indian vaccine producers to lower the prices of their pentavalent vaccines. Used for paediatric vaccination, these vaccines offer protection against five potentially fatal conditions: diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type B.
The Indian Serum Institute, which has already brought its price down to 1.75 American dollars a dose has let it be known that it will continue to offer the most competitive prices. The Panacea Biotech company has also undertaken to reduce its price by something in the order of 15%.
Furthermore, the pharmaceutical group GlaxoSmithKline recently announced that it would reduce the price of its rotavirus vaccine by 67% compared with its lowest public price. This means that administering two doses of the vaccine will cost no more than 5 American dollars. This is at a time when, worldwide, more than 500,000 children under the age of 5 die each year from diarrhoea associated with rotavirus infection.
Since the creation of the GAVI Alliance in 2000, the organisation has been able to prevent a total of 5.4 million deaths.
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14 article(s)
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