GSK recently made a new extended price freeze commitment to the governments of Gavi-eligible countries. With this offer, developing countries that graduate from Gavi support due to increased economic wealth will be able to continue to purchase vaccines against pneumonia, diarrhoea and cervical cancer at significantly discounted Gavi prices for a decade after graduation. This will help ensure sustainable vaccination programmes in developing countries in the long term. Gavi is a private-public-partnership which aims to increase access to vaccination in 73 of the world’s poorest countries.
Sir Andrew Witty, chief executive officer, of GSK, says: “Over the past 15 years, Gavi has helped to protect many hundreds of millions of children in the world’s poorest countries from infectious diseases and has doubtless saved millions of lives. As long-standing supporters of Gavi, we continue to take steps to ensure we are doing what we can to increase access to vaccines. Our extended price-freeze is designed to bring vaccine price stability for graduating countries, ensuring sustainability of the Gavi model and helping more children benefit from national immunisation programmes.”
From 2016, 22 countries with growing economies will begin to graduate from Gavi support. This process allows Gavi to focus resources on the poorest countries, while enabling governments to take increasing responsibility and ownership for vaccination programmes over time. GSK was the first company to commit to maintaining its lowest prices for the graduating countries as they take this step. This enables governments to plan for financing the full cost of their immunisation programmes helping to maintain their commitment to sustainable immunisation programmes.
Ahead of the Gavi replenishment conference taking place in Berlin tomorrow, GSK also reaffirmed that if the company identifies new manufacturing efficiencies that reduce the costs of producing these vaccines, it will pass those savings on to Gavi and its donors.
Luc Debruyne, president of vaccines, GSK says: “More children from the world’s poorest countries are being vaccinated against more diseases than ever before. This has been made possible by unprecedented cooperation between governments, groups such as Gavi and pharmaceutical companies. Four of every five of GSK’s vaccines are provided to developing countries at a substantial discount to western prices. We offer our lowest prices to Gavi which can be as little as a tenth of developed world prices. At these levels, we are able to just cover our costs, which is key to making our GAVI offer sustainable. We continue to look at ways to reduce production costs and any savings we make we will pass on to Gavi.”
GSK is a long-standing partner of Gavi and for many years has reserved its lowest vaccine prices for Gavi-eligible countries. In the 15 years since its formation in 2000, Gavi has helped to fund the immunisation of half a billion children in some of the world’s poorest countries, helping to avert seven million deaths and significantly reducing the incidence of many infectious diseases.
GSK is one of the largest contributors of vaccines to Gavi, supplying innovative vaccines, such as those for rotavirus, pneumococcal disease and cervical cancer, at significantly reduced prices to help accelerate access in developing countries. GSK has committed to provide more than 850 million vaccine doses that will help protect up to 300 million children in the developing world by 2024.
GSK has a long track record on taking steps to address global health challenges, for example investing in vaccine research programmes in critical diseases that affect poor countries such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV and Ebola, and forming a groundbreaking five-year partnership with Save the Children to help save the lives of one million children.