Just in time for the holiday season, Pfizer ($PFE) and GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK) said they are selling an additional 360 million doses of their pneumonia vaccine to a global health organization at a discounted $3.50 a dose. This boosts a combined 600 million doses they already committed to the group last year, Reuters reports.
The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization is buying the doses, split evenly between Pfizer's Prevenar GlaxoSmithKline's Synflorix. Both corporations will supply the vaccines through 2023.
The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, or GAVI, raised $4.3 billion in pledges from donors in June to help fund its effort to immunize children against pneumococcal disease, which kills over 500,000 children annually, mostly in the developing world, and causes pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis. GAVI hopes to prevent 7 million deaths by 2030, Reuters said.
Large orders helped drive the price down, Reuters noted. Pfizer and GSK will get $7 per dose for the first 20% of the vaccines and $3.50 for the rest. It is unclear what the vaccines would net at full price. At least for Pfizer, however, the $3.50 price tag is over 90% cheaper than the market price in certain industrialized nations, a company spokeswoman told Reuters.
- here's the Reuters story
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