By Alex C
With about one million children dying annually from vaccine preventable diseases such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, poliomyelitis, measles and vaccines remaining the most cost-effective public health interventions, dearth in capital has hampered Nigerian pharmaceutical firms from investing into vaccine research and product development.
While it takes years to deliver a licensed vaccine and requires funding commitment throughout the period of the vaccine research, investigations reveal that the cost of developing a vaccine (from research and discovery to testing, gaining regulatory approval, manufacture and product registration)-is estimated to cost between $200 million and $500 million per vaccine.
Pharm Ola Ijimakin, General Manager, Marketing, Fidson Healthcare Plc, told Pride Magazine that a major reason why most Nigerian pharmaceutical firms have not invested in vaccine manufacturing is as a result of the huge capital investment required.
While the requirements for developing vaccines are not so different from the manufacture of other medicines, Mr. Ijimakin stated that the technology and investment required is higher, a situation which multinational companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Sanofi Pasteur, Pfizer Inc, etc. have ventured into.
According to Pharm Ijimakin “Most of the funds used by government to purchase vaccines are donor funds. There are a lot of rules tied to these funds including WHO pre-qualification of the product. The process is capital intensive. Exactly how much is required will depend on the scale. If government will buy from local manufacturers, I am sure there are companies that can cope with the capital layout required
Pharm. Ijimakin pointed out that though the vaccine market is potentially lucrative, the challenge is that vaccine procurement is largely driven by the government.
“Most diseases that vaccines protect against are public health issues therefore government does most of the purchasing and are mostly paid for by donor funds with the attendant conditionalities that do not favour local manufacturers. The private market for vaccines is relatively small,” Ijimakin added.
Kate Elder, vaccines policy advisor, Médecins Sans Frontières stated that under the current business model, prices for vaccines and medicines are based on recouping both Research and Development (R&D) and manufacturing costs.
Eldee noted that some new vaccines are more complicated to produce than older ones, which contributes to their higher cost.
“Vaccine manufacturers do not make their R&D and manufacturing costs public, a practice that makes the vaccine industry one of the most opaque areas of the health sector. One much-discussed effort to reduce costs and spur adaptation of new vaccines for developing countries is the PVC Advance Market Commitment (AMC) designed by the GAVI Alliance, a public-private global health partnership.
“GAVI launched the AMC initiative in 2009 to incentivize R&D aimed at the needs of poor countries and to accelerate introduction of PCV into these settings, by creating a subsidized market for Prevnar 13 (PCV) producers. So far, this pilot program has helped to accelerate the introduction of PCV into developing countries and to distribute 82 million doses but has fallen short of creating formulations adapted to resource-poor settings/of fundamentally influencing the PCV vaccine market,” she concluded.
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