From the article:
Not only was Pfizer given a subsidy to ‘develop’ a drug that already existed, the profits they will make from the inefficient vaccine is much beyond what was originally stipulated.
Pfizer has been granted an
Indian patent for its Prevenar 13 – a pneumococcal vaccine. The vaccine costs more than Rs 3,000 per dose and the three doses required to immunise a child cost more than Rs 10,000. The decision of the patent office bars other Indian companies from making a cheaper version of the vaccine. Although the vaccine is exorbitantly expensive, it has poor efficacy. Yet one is not surprised by the news of the patent, given the background story, nationally and internationally, of this vaccine. According to the
petition by Prashant Bhushan in the Delhi high court, this vaccine has the distinction of being recommended even before it was manufactured, let alone tested, by the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization, which is meant to evaluate and recommend vaccines for introduction in the country...
Pharmaceutical companies in general are keen to make drugs for the rich countries that they can sell at great profit. They have little interest in making vaccines for diseases like malaria that affected poor countries because the countries that needed the vaccine cannot afford their profit margins. In 2005, the Center for Global Development and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation came up with an idea to incentivise drug manufacturers to manufacture vaccines for neglected diseases like malaria.
Read full article here.
