Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) are the only two producers of the life-saving pneumonia vaccine. Many lives have been saved by this vaccine, but pneumonia still kills nearly 1 million children every year.
In fact, 75% of children around the world remain unprotected against pneumonia, the leading infectious cause of childhood death worldwide.
You have the power to help change this.
Only about half of the world’s countries have been able to start using the pneumonia vaccine produced by Pfizer & GSK, known as the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV). One key barrier is the high price.
Even at the lowest global prices, it costs 68 times more today to vaccinate a child in developing countries than it did in 2001 – nearly half of that increase is due to the high price of the pneumonia vaccine alone. This means that a growing number of developing countries can't afford to buy the pneumonia vaccine to protect their children against this childhood killer.
Pfizer & GSK have collectively reported nearly US$48 billion in global sales from this vaccine. That’s almost three times the entire 20-year budget that Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, uses to provide 10 different vaccines in around 60 of the world’s poorest countries.
In 2016 after years of efforts and public campaigning Pfizer and GSK finally announced that they were reducing the price of the vaccine to slightly more than 9 US dollars per child for humanitarian organisations like MSF. While this is definitely a step in the right direction, it means that millions of children are still left unvaccinated in countries where their parents or governments can’t afford the vaccine.
It's time for Pfizer and GSK to lower the price to $5 per child (for all three doses) for all developing countries.
The lowest global price for the pneumonia vaccine is just over $9 per child (for all three doses), available to only the poorest countries through Gavi. History has shown that with competition, prices will inevitably come down. A producer in India is developing a pneumonia vaccine that it has promised to sell for $6 per child – but it won’t be available until at least 2019. A more affordable pneumonia vaccine could help reduce this unnecessary loss of life, so why wait any longer to lower the price?
Please help us ask Pfizer & GSK to put children's lives over more blockbuster revenues. Today, children are being left unprotected in countries such as Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Romania, Syria and Thailand, among many others. A child dies of pneumonia every 35 seconds.
