Announcing a 60% cut in prices of Pentavalent vaccine Pune-based Serum Institute has urged big pharmaceutical firms to take their lead and offer vaccines at lower prices for saving lives and pledged its support to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) in London on Monday.
Announcing the support at an august gathering of global donors and international healthcare agencies, Cyrus Poonawalla, CMD, Serum Institute of India reiterated Serum’s commitment to cut prices for the company’s pentavalent vaccine by 60 per cent making it available at the lowest possible cost of Rs 100 ($1.75 ). This is in line with Serum’s philantrophic philosophy to further aid children’s health in developing countries and also assists GAVI’s mission by making vaccines available at the lowest affordable price to UNICEF and PAHO.
Set up by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the GAVI Alliance is a Geneva based public – private partnership aimed at improving health in the world’s poorest countries. The alliance brings together developing country and donor governments, the World Health Organisation, UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine industry in both industrialised and developing countries, research and technical agencies, civil society and other private philanthropists. GAVI support consists of providing life-saving vaccines and strengthening health – systems. In its first decade of work GAVI has financed the immunization of more than 288 million children and prevented more than 5 million premature deaths.
Serum’s – Pentavalent Vaccine helps protect children against five potential killers namely – diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B and haemophilus influenza type B. Poonawalla highlighted the fact that Serum is making the commitment recognising its moral responsibility to keep these vaccines as affordable as possible. He was speaking at the conference on fundraising for global immunisation programmes organised by Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) at London. The conference aims to raise $3.7 billion and immunise 243 million around the world. Speaking at the GAVI Alliance conference Poonawalla said, "The very genesis of Serum Institute was a quest to make vaccines more affordable for the common man. The partnership with GAVI serves as a good platform for us to reach out to those poor nations and bring comfort to the millions of underprivileged across the globe.” The company hopes to achieve WHO prequalification for these vaccines in the near future.