Unicef acts to lower global vaccine prices

By Peter Orengo

The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) has for the first time publicly listed the price it pays for vaccines, thus revealing differences in prices it pays companies for the drug.

From now on they would publish the prices they pay for vaccines from each individual manufacturer, rather than an average price as they had done previously.

According to present procurement trends, agencies like the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria usually reveal what they pay for drugs.

Unicef on the other hand has avoided confrontation with its suppliers, posting only the average prices it pays while donors have not demanded more details.

Kenya’s Public Health Director Dr Shahnaz Shariff says the decision in effect could lead to drastic cuts in prices for vaccines that save millions of children’s lives because Information on market dynamics that influence vaccine uptake will be more publicly available, starting with prices at which companies sells vaccines to Unicef.

Good news

"This is good news for Kenya because we get our vaccines through Unicef. It will now be public knowledge the prices each pharmaceutical company will be offering. The competition will in effect push prices lower," said Sharif.

Last year Unicef paid Sh63 billion ($747 million) for vaccines, buying over two billion doses for 58 per cent of the world’s children.

As the largest buyer of children’s vaccines, Unicef said the move is in line with its commitment to ensure that vaccine supply is sustainable and affordable. It said its partners in immunisation have also welcomed the development. Shanelle Hall, director of Unicef’s supply division and the driving force behind the new transparency policy, said she hoped to extend it to other goods that Unicef buys, including mosquito nets, diagnostic kits, essential medicines and ready-to-eat foods for starving children.

Lowest prices

Partners promoting vaccine affordability and availability agree that pricing is a multi-dimensional strategy. To reach the lowest prices, interventions must address supply and demand-side factors and risks.

MÈdecins Sans FrontiËres (MSF) representative Judith Waguma applauded the move saying the more affordable the vaccines are, the larger the number of children who will be vaccinated.

"This will then lead to fewer outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles, which MSF has recently been responding to in several countries in the region," she said.

Kenya is at the moment grappling with the influx of refugees from the war tone Somalia and other neighbouring countries that don’t have elaborate immunisation programmes in their countries.