Big Pharma 'Overcharging' Poor Countries For Child Vaccines - Report

Doctors Without Borders has released a new report blasting two top pharmaceutical companies for inflated costs of vital vaccines that have proved too steep for poor nations, recommending they adjust prices in order to save lives.  The charity, Doctors Without Borders, or Medecins Sans Frontieres, has called on GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer to drop the price of the pneumococcal vaccine to $5 per child in the most impoverished countries.

The vaccine protects young children against 12 diseases, including sepsis, bacterial meningitis, and pneumonia. Worldwide, pneumococcal disease kills about a million children a year, the group said.

The international medical aid organization said in the report that the cost of vaccinating children in the world’s poorest countries is now 68 times higher than in 2001. Pneumococcal vaccines currently account for 45 percent of that price jump, the report noted...