Charity hits out at pharmaceutical companies over child vaccination costs

Medical charity, Médicins Sans Frontières, meaning 'doctors without borders', are campaigning for a reduction in the cost of children's vaccines and a reform in the way in which they are produced and sold.

In comparison to 2001, the most common vaccinations provided to children are now a whopping 68 times more expensive which the charity feel will pose problems in developing countries.

The charity is calling on pharmaceutical companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer to revise their prices because they fear that parents will be unable to fully vaccinate their child if they continue to increase.

Commenting on the situation, the director of Policy and Analysis for the charity's Access Campaign, Rohit Malpani, said: "We think it's time for GSK and Pfizer to do their part to make vaccines more affordable for countries in the long term, because the discounts the companies are offering today are just not good enough."

While acknowledging the charity's concerns, one of the main manufacturers of the vaccines, GlaxoSmithKline, argues that cutting the price of these life-saving vaccines will affect the economics of production and may actually threaten supplies to poorer countries.