Offer money up front to prod vaccine makers

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Companies might be coaxed into making much-needed vaccines if governments and private donors teamed up to buy them in advance, a Washington think tank suggested on Thursday.

The plan would give the donors an option, obligating them to pay the manufacturer only if a vaccine was actually produced.

The Center for Global Development believes the plan could help draw companies back into making vaccines - a business many have fled because of difficult regulations, liability and because vaccines are not especially profitable.

"Barely 10 percent of global research and development is devoted to diseases that affect 90 percent of the world’s population,” said the report from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center. “AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria kill about five million people each year, yet we have no effective vaccine for these diseases.”

Another 3 million a year, mostly young children, die of diseases for which there are vaccines, such as measles.

“Pneumococcus is estimated to kill 1.1 million people a year, and rotavirus 0.8 million,” said the report, which recommends a $3 billion “commitment” for each disease.

TRYING TO MAKE IT EASIER

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Congress are all seeking ways to encourage more companies to make vaccines, including guaranteed purchases and eased regulation and liability.

But more is needed to encourage makers to develop and manufacture vaccines for diseases in poor countries.

“The total market size for vaccines in developing countries is tiny - about $500 million a year,” the report said.

“We could make it worthwhile for the pharmaceutical industry to invest much more in research and development on vaccines for diseases occurring mainly in developing countries - and in the mass production of those vaccines when they have been developed,” it adds.

Not just governments but international organizations like the World Bank can provide some of this money, the group said.

The Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunization’s Vaccines Fund is an example. “This is a mechanism that is working,” said Dr. Richard Klausner, director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s global health program.

Three years ago only one company made Hepatitis B vaccine. Now eight to 12 companies are in the market or trying to get into it, Klausner told a news conference. Demand has gone up, and the price has dropped by 20 percent.

The crisis in the vaccine industry was illustrated for the United States last year when one of only two major manufacturers, Chiron Corp., lost its license to make the annual influenza vaccine.

The loss cut the anticipated U.S. vaccine supply in half and forced health officials to scramble to find extra doses.

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