Vaccine scheme ramps up cover and cuts prices

By Ben Hirschler

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Record numbers of children in poor countries are receiving life-saving vaccines, thanks to a major programme backed by the private sector and governments that is driving down prices.

Figures released on Friday at the World Economic Forum showed immunisation funded by the public-private GAVI Alliance in developing countries had avoided an estimated 2.3 million early deaths since 2000 by vaccinating 138 million children.

The total for 2006 alone was 600,000, according to World Health Organisation estimates. Melinda Gates, who with her husband and Microsoft founder Bill Gates has committed $1.5 billion to GAVI, said the partnership was spearheading a major turnaround in children's health.

"When GAVI was founded, immunisation rates in poor countries were on the decline. Today, they are at an all-time high," she said.

GAVI has also received funding from 17 donor governments and has committed $2.6 billion to support national immunisation programmes in more than 70 countries since its inception in 2000.

In Africa, immunisation rates have reached an impressive 73 percent -- but, even so, more than 2.5 million children in poor countries still die each year because they have not received immunisations taken for granted in the industrialised world.

Bill Gates said the need now was to keep the momentum going and ensure the developing world also had access to newer -- and more expensive -- vaccines in future.

"Everyone needs to do more," he said. Executive Secretary Julian Lob Levyt said GAVI's buying power and the long-term market it assured manufacturers had helped slash the price of many vaccines, with hepatitis B, for example, reduced by half to just a few tens of cents.

The challenge for new vaccines, such as rotavirus and cervical cancer shots recently developed by Merck & Co Inc and GlaxoSmithKline Plc, will be to agree a path of affordability.

"For some of the new and exciting vaccines, we're prepared to subsidise fairly high prices but with a clear intention to get those prices affordable," he said.

The issue of affordability will become even more acute if scientists succeed in producing vaccines for Africa's two biggest killers -- malaria and HIV/AIDS.