UNICEF discloses vaccine prices for first time

On Friday, May 27, UNICEF posted on its website the actual prices that it has paid individual drugmakers for 16 vaccines purchased over the last decade. It's a move that a few Western pharmaceutical companies don't support. Novartis AG and Merck & Co., which only sells one of its many children's vaccines to UNICEF, both declined to have their prices published.

UNICEF said it will continue to disclose pricing of future vaccine deals, with the hope that the transparency will push drugmakers to cut prices and thus allow the organisation to vaccinate more children and save more lives.

“Transparency will also help foster a competitive, diverse supplier base,” said Shanelle Hall, director of UNICEF's supply division. She noted that it also will help UNICEF's partners and those governments that buy vaccines on their own to make more informed decisions in price negotiations with drugmakers.

UNICEF last year spent $757 million to provide 2.5 billion doses of vaccines to 99 countries, reaching an estimated 58 per cent of the world's children.

Its price list shows significant disparity, with Western drugmakers often charging UNICEF double what companies in India and Indonesia do. Just as striking is the steady rise in prices in the last decade, with the cost of vaccines against measles, polio and tetanus roughly doubling between 2001 and 2010. Prices of a few vaccines have remained flat or declined as additional competitors entered the market. There's also a huge spread in prices among various vaccines. As might be expected, shots that have been around for some time and those vaccines made by multiple companies cost just pennies per dose, such as tetanus and tuberculosis shots and oral polio vaccine. But a combination shot for immunisation against diptheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and haemophilus influenza can run UNICEF $3 or more per dose. The dual vaccine against 10 or more strains of pneumococcal disease, which causes ear infections and meningitis, costs $3.50 a shot. And some of the vaccines require more than one booster shot, adding to the cost.

The cost is partly justified by the complex manufacturing process used to make combination vaccines. And UNICEF still pays far less than the $71 and $114 per dose, respectively, that is charged in the U.S. for those two vaccines. But given that the organisation's mission is to immunise entire populations of at-risk children, any savings means more can be vaccinated.

Many of the largest global pharmaceutical companies, most recently Johnson & Johnson, have jumped into the vaccine business in recent years to diversify revenue as many of their blockbuster pills are facing generic competition. Vaccines are all but immune from generic competition in developed countries, and some newer shots, such as Pfizer Inc.'s Prevnar pneumococcal vaccine, now bring in billions of dollars in revenue each year.

Those big companies are looking to less-developed countries for future sales growth, and vaccines against crippling and deadly childhood diseases are cost-effective purchases for countries with small health budgets. — AP