Charity Urges Price Cut for Pneumonia Vaccine for Poor Children

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Global charity Medecins Sans Frontieres delivered a petition with hundreds of thousands of signatures to pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc on Wednesday, asking the drugmaker to slash the price of its pneumonia vaccine for poor children.

Supporters of a proposal to cut the vaccine price to $5 U.S. per needy child took their petition, and a baby’s crib covered with signatures, to the company’s New York City headquarters on the eve of its annual shareholder meeting.

They made the same request of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which also makes a vaccine to prevent pneumonia.

Pneumonia killed some 920,000 children globally last year, according to United Nations data, and many regions of the world cannot afford to vaccinate children against the acute respiratory infection, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said.

Source: Reuters (link opens in a new window)

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Health Care
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vaccines