MSF Not Impressed With Pfizer's "Tiny" Vaccine Price Cut
January 27, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
Global drugmaker Pfizer Inc. pledged Tuesday to cut the price of its four-dose pneumococcal vaccine by 20 percent in response to pressure from international aid groups who say the cost of the lifesaving medicine is often too high for the developing world. The price reduction did not impress those critics, however, with Doctors Without Borders saying in response it would continue to press Pfizer and others to drop the cost of that vaccine to $5 per course.
As part of its new pricing structure, Pfizer said its vaccine Prevenar 13, will go from $3.30 per-dose to $3.10 per dose for the new four-dose vial presentation (or around $12.40 total), and will be introduced under the Advanced Market Commitment (AMC) program in 2016 and extended through 2025.
GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer Inc. (PFE) came under fire last week, after international aid group Doctors Without Borders released a report saying the two are vastly overcharging for vaccines in the developing world, leaving millions of people at risk for contracting easily preventable diseases.
“A handful of big pharmaceutical companies are overcharging donors and developing countries for vaccines that already earn them billions of dollars in wealthy countries,” said Rohit Malpani, director of policy and analysis for Medecins Sans Frontieres’ (the nonprofit’s French name) Access Campaign.
Pfizer vaccine head Susan Silbermann said in a statement the cut was a prior decision and was not related to MSF's demand. MSF last week slammed the vaccine industry for its “secretive” practices and said it met with a distinct unwillingness to reveal prices.
The report timed to be released to coincide with this week’s meeting of the Geneva-based GAVI Alliance, the largest funder of vaccines sent to developing countries, which is supported both by international governments and large public health charities such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. At the conference in Berlin, organizers have said they plan to press donors for around $7.5 billion to help vaccine children globally in 2016 and 2020.
"Governments need to put pressure on (drug) companies to offer better prices to GAVI," said Kate Elder, an MSF policy adviser, in a statement.
Continuing Pfizer’s trend, GlaxoSmithKline said it will also extend its price-freeze commitment to 10 years GAVI, while Sanofi pledged to boost production of a yellow fever vaccine, a chronically difficult to obtain, but crucial, vaccine in the developing world.
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