Our commitment to increasing access to vaccines

Every year, millions of children in the world’s poorest countries die unnecessarily from infectious diseases. Many of these deaths could be prevented through vaccination – the most cost-effective public health measure available after clean drinking water to prevent disease, suffering and death.ⁱ
Vaccination has dramatically reduced or eradicated diseases such as smallpox and polio that once threatened our world.^ii,iii But children, particularly those in the poorest countries in the world, continue to be threatened by vaccine preventable diseases.
Pneumococcus, for example, can lead to pneumonia and meningitis and takes the lives of 800,000 children each year.^iv Half a million children die of rotavirus-related diarrhoea each year – the equivalent of a child a minute worldwide.^v
GSK is one of the world’s largest vaccines producers. Our vaccines are included in immunisation campaigns in 182 countries worldwide and we delivered 1.4 billion vaccine doses in 2010, of which nearly 1 billion were shipped for use in developing countries.
We have a long-standing tiered pricing policy for our vaccine portfolio which enables poorer countries to pay significantly less than higher income countries for the same vaccine. For the developing world, prices can be as little as a tenth of those for developed countries.
We reserve our lowest prices for agencies such as UNICEF which purchase large volumes of vaccines for the world’s poorest children. To put this into context, GSK currently supplies 50-60% of its vaccines by volume to UNICEF which represents just 2-3% of its sales by value.
GSK recently announced a new offer to supply 125 million doses of our rotavirus vaccine, Rotarix, to the GAVI Alliance at a non-profit price of $2.50 per dose. The offer will now be reviewed by UNICEF and, if accepted, more than 60 million children could be protected against rotavirus over the next 5 years.
This follows the announcement in March 2010 that GSK would supply up to 300 million doses of our pneumococcal vaccine, Synflorix, to GAVI at a heavily discounted price through an innovative financing mechanism known as the Advance Market Commitment (AMC).
By guaranteeing the availability of initial purchase funds, the AMC enables vaccine makers to invest in development and manufacturing capability. GSK has invested more than $400 million in a new manufacturing plant in Singapore which will produce several hundred million doses of Synflorix to meet expected demand. From 2013, the price to GAVI for Synflorix will drop to $3.50 per dose, less than 10% of the cost in developed markets.
GSK is also involved in the fight against malaria, which kills nearly 800,000 children each year, the vast majority in sub-Saharan Africa. Our candidate vaccine, RTS,S, which we are developing in partnership with the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), is currently in phase III studies.
We have committed to pricing the RTS,S vaccine to cover our costs and to generate a small return of around 5% which will be reinvested in research and development for second-generation malaria vaccines, or for other products for diseases of the developing world.

WHO, UNICEF, World Bank. State of the world’s vaccines and immunization. 3rd edition. Geneva, 2009.
UNICEF. The progress of nations 1996 – Health. February 2006. (accessed 14 June 2011).
WHO. Poliomyelitis factsheet. November 2010. (accessed 14 June 2011).
Pneumococcal Awareness Council of Experts. Pneumococcal disease fact sheet (PDF). Washington, DC: Sabin Vaccine Institute; (accessed 14 June 2011).
World Health Organisation. Weekly epidemiological record 2011; 86: 173-176

Our vaccines

Find out more about GSK's vaccines