Protecting Children Against Pneumonia

This is the VOA Special English Development Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.comMillions of babies and children could soon be protected against
the deadly disease pneumonia.
Two leading drug companies have agreed to supply vaccines against pneumococcal disease to the
world's poorest countries at a reduced price. Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline signed the historic Advance Market Commitment agreement in March. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, or GAVI, helped negotiate the deal.
The group says the low cost vaccines could save as many as seven million lives by the year twenty thirty.
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. Last year,
the governments of Italy,
the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia and Norway joined with the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They provided one and ahalf billion dollars to launch the pneumococcal vaccine project. Jeffrey Rowland is with the GAVI alliance. He says the money helps to persuade drug makers to take part in the project.
GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer are
the first two drug companies to
take part. They have agreed to provide thirty million doses of the vaccine each year for ten years. The first twenty percent of the vaccines will sell for seven dollars a dose. The remaining eighty percent will cost three dollars and fifty cents per dose. That is ninety per cent less than current prices in the United States.
Mister Rowland says the agreement
is a huge achievement for the developing world. He says vaccination is a life or death question for poor people. 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.
And that's the VOA Special English Development Report. For transcripts and podcasts of our programs, along with captioned videos and a lot more, visit us at voaspecialenglish.com.
You can also find us on Facebook.

(Adapted from a radio program broadcast 29Mar2010)