MSF slams expensive vaccines, urges GSK and Pfizer to cut prices

The international charity Medecins Sans Frontieres urged drugmakers GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer on Tuesday to slash the price of their pneumococcal vaccines to $5 per child in poor countries. In a report on vaccine prices ahead of an international donor conference in Berlin at the end of January, MSF slammed Big Pharma companies and said the cost of vaccinating a child in the world's poorest countries was now 68 times higher than in 2001. The "skyrocketing" prices mean many countries can't afford expensive new vaccines such as those that protect against pneumococcal disease, which kills about a million children a year, MSF's report said. "A handful of big pharmaceutical companies are overcharging donors and developing countries for vaccines that already earn them billions of dollars in wealthy countries," said Rohit Malpani, policy and analysis director for MSF's access campaign. via Health News Headlines - Yahoo News Read More Here..