Vaccines are one of medicine's success stories. In the developed world, routine childhood vaccination saves millions of children from illness and potentially death each year. But, in the developing world inadequate access to vaccines leads to more than two million deaths annually and two thirds of these deaths occur in children under the age of five. The newer vaccines, such as hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenza vaccine are now starting to be used in low and middle income countries, but were available in the West more than two decades ago. New vaccines have recently been developed, such as one for rotavirus, the main cause of childhood diarrhoea, which causes illness and death among millions of children in the developing world each year. The vaccine against cervical cancer is another case. Cervical cancer causes a quarter of a million deaths each year in developing countries. An editorial in this week's edition of The British Medical Journal argues that there are three main reasons why access to vaccines remains poor in the developing world - the idea that healthcare infrastructure must be in place before vaccines can be given, lack of funding and the belief that vaccine approval in high income countries is necessary before they can be used elsewhere. However, according to Dave Chokshi and Aaron Kesselheim all of these so-called preconditions are open to challenge. Providing the infrastructure for administering vaccines could in fact promote the development of a healthcare infrastructure, the costs of providing vaccines must be balanced against the costs of the illness and death that results from not providing them and the public health community should better regulate intellectual property so that new vaccines reach the people who need them. For example, although the R&D around the cervical cancer vaccine took place in Australia and the USA, early trials of the vaccine took place in India, Costa Rica and Brazil. The developing world often acts as the testing ground for drugs - this should be used as leverage for accelerated and affordable access to these drugs.
Bridget Farham Editor https://www.bizcommunity.com