Millions more children from the world's poorest countries are being vaccinated against more diseases than ever before. This is a good thing and has been made possible by unprecedented cooperation between governments, NGOs and pharmaceutical companies.

Over the past 16 years, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance has played a valuable role in bringing new and under used vaccines to hundreds of millions of children in the world's poorest countries. GSK is one of the largest contributors of vaccines to Gavi, supplying innovative vaccines for rotavirus, pneumococcal disease and cervical cancer, at significantly reduced prices to help accelerate access in developing countries.

In 2010, GSK signed an agreement to provide millions of doses of our pneumococcal vaccine, Synflorix, to Gavi at a deeply discounted price to help accelerate access for children in the world's poorest countries. Synflorix is one of the most complex we've ever manufactured, essentially combining 10 vaccines in one and requiring significant upfront capital investment.

Since then, we have expanded our volume commitments to Gavi, pledging to deliver 720 million doses of the vaccine up to 2024 to protect 240 million children from pneumococcal disease which can lead to pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis and is a leading cause of death in children under the age of five in developing countries.

Manufacturing at this scale has enabled us to identify incremental cost efficiencies. These have reached a threshold that we feel is meaningful and as a result we are able to offer this further price reduction to Gavi as of 2017 for Synflorix, bringing the per dose tail price to $3.05. At this level, we are able to just cover our costs and maintain our ability to supply the vaccine to these countries in the long-term. We continue to look at ways to reduce production costs and we would seek to pass on any savings we can identify on to Gavi.

We continue to play our part in supporting countries as they move from Gavi support due to increased economic wealth towards financing and sustaining their own immunisation programmes. This is evident in our commitment to a ten-year price freeze for countries that graduate from Gavi support.

For the rest of the world, we have used tiered pricing for our vaccines since the early 1990's. Under our tiered pricing policy, we ask countries to pay different prices based on their differing income levels rather than a single flat rate. Typically each year, around 80% of all of GSK's vaccines, including our pneumococcal vaccine, Synflorix, are provided to developing countries (including least developed, low and middle income countries) at a substantial discount to western prices.

At the same time, we have maintained active vaccine research programmes in diseases that most affect poorer countries such as malaria, TB, HIV and Ebola.

GSK - GlaxoSmithKline plc issued this content on 27 April 2016 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 27 April 2016 18:36:56 UTC

Original Document: http://www.gsk.com/en-gb/media/press-releases/2015/gsk-response-to-msf-vaccine-report/