Accessibility links

Protecting Children Against Pneumonia

Protecting Children Against Pneumonia

Protecting Children Against Pneumonia

Two leading drug companies will supply vaccines to the world’s poorest countries at a reduced price.

This is the VOA Special English Development Report.


The World Health Organization says pneumonia kills almost two million children each year. This is more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. It is the leading cause of death among young children. And, more than ninety percent of those deaths happen in the developing world.

These are all reasons why GAVI chose the pneumococcal vaccine for its first Advance Market Commitment project. The private-public partnerships are designed to increase the availability of low cost vaccines in poor areas.


JEFFREY ROWLAND: "The biggest challenge of getting life saving vaccines to poor countries is that there's no market. People can't afford them. That's why we don't really have a malaria vaccine yet, because no one in rich countries really suffers from malaria. What we did for the pneumococcal vaccine was we said we will pay one point five billion dollars if you develop the right vaccines, and the right volumes that we need and at the right price. And it was a gamble."



JEFFREY ROWLAND: "Vaccination, which we tend to take for granted in countries like the United States or in Western Europe, in fact a lot of us don't even know which diseases we've been vaccinated against. That's not the case in poor countries. Vaccination is a life or death question for poor people and if you can vaccinate a child to prevent a disease from happening it is a lot more cost effective than it is to treat that disease afterwards."
