Vaccines getting to poor nations faster

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The timeline for getting new vaccines to poor countries that need them most is being shortened from decades to less than two years, an alliance of U.N. agencies and government and private groups said Friday. Vaccines for diseases such as hepatitis B, measles and polio have typically taken 15 to 20 years from the time they are developed in Western countries until they are available in poor countries.

But according to the GAVI Alliance, a vaccine licensed last year in the United States and Europe against rotavirus, which causes diarrhea and dehydration, will take less than two years from the laboratory to village clinics with new international funding. Rosamund Lewis, a program director for the Geneva-based GAVI Alliance, said the organization raised $3.6 billion since its creation in 2000. It has since helped to buy vaccines for more than 70 developing countries to immunize the majority of their children. Immunization rates in the countries increased to 73 percent from 40 percent in 2000, Lewis said Friday in an interview before addressing the Fifth European Congress on Tropical Medicine and International Health.

Lewis described a radical makeover in delivering vaccines at prices poor countries can afford. Vaccine producers slash prices when guaranteed a market base of millions of users, she said. The vaccine against some forms of bacterial meningitis, which costs $60 per dose in the West, is available for $3.50 when bought in bulk by UNICEF, the U.N. children's fund which is part of GAVI."We created a market where one didn't exist before by saying we have the money for these countries to buy vaccines," Lewis said.