Pentavalent vaccine is widely considered the gold standard for childhood immunis ation because it delivers protection against five diseases: Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b), diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus and hepatitis B.
The majority of vaccines, financed through GAVI, is purchased by Alliance member UNICEF.
GAVI Alliance said Wednesday in a statement that a recent tender for pentavalent vaccine had shown a significant price drop with the weighted average price for 2010 falling below US$ 3, a decrease of almost 50 cents per dose on the 2009 price.
GAVI said this would create approximately US$ 55 million in savings in 2010 and enable it finance the immunisation of 6.3 million more children.
'This is the GAVI effect at work: encouraging and pooling growing demand from countries, attracting new manufacturers and increasing competition to drive down prices,' GAVI chief executive officer, Julian Lob-Levyt, said.
'The price drop has come later than we had hoped and it needs to fall further. But this is a clear indication that our market-shaping efforts work.'
Lob-Levyt stated that pentavalent was projected to be GAVI's single biggest expenditure through to 2015, accounting for some 40 per cent of vaccine spending.
'Its price, and those of other GAVI vaccines, is the major determinant of the future support that the GAVI Alliance will be able to provide to countries.'
As recently as 2004, the vaccine cost US$ 3.65 per dose, but UNICEF said the price was expected to decline even further, to US$ 2.83 per dose by 2012, for a total reduction of 22 per cent over an eight-year period.
'This price drop is no accident, but rather the result of a strategy to leverage the purchasing power of hundreds of millions of people,' said UNICEF deputy executive director Saad Houry.
'Clearly, industry understands and responds to a market, regardless of whether that market is in poor or rich countries. The Alliance's model is beginning to work and we are optimistic that the trend will continue, as competition and dem and increase over time.'
New data, released by the Alliance Wednesday, showed that by the end of 2009, more than four million premature deaths caused by pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) and hepatitis B will be prevented through GAVI support.
'We have now vaccinated 256 million children in the poorest countries through GAVI support. The number of deaths averted as a result vindicates the decision we made ten years ago to create a unified effort to spread new and underused vaccines to the world's most vulnerable children,' said Daisy Mafubelu, Assistant Director-General for Family and Community Health at the World Health Organisation.
'The challenge we face, particularly in the midst of the financial crisis, is to maintain and extend our gains with basic vaccines while ensuring that new life -saving innovations are made widely available in the developing world â" especially new vaccines against pneumococcus and rotavirus, the leading causes of pneumonia and diarrhoea mortality respectively.'
GAVI support consists of providing life-saving vaccines and strengthening health systems.
Since 2000, 256 million children have been vaccinated and close to four million premature deaths averted.
Lusaka - 18/11/2009
Pana
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