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| Children being vaccinated at the SOS Medical Center in Bakoteh, Gambia |
June 7, 2011: A number of top drug makers have announced they will lower the price of key vaccines for children and others living in the developing world.
Their aim, according to Reuters, is to sustain vaccinations they supply through the GAVI Alliance, a public-private global initiative that works to increase people’s access to immunizations in poor nations. GAVI has a $3.7 billion gap in its commitments, including a goal to help introduce the rotavirus vaccine in 40 poor nations by 2015.
The price cuts, provided by companies such as GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Merk, and Johnson & Johnson, among others, will help close that funding gap.
The rotavirus vaccine is so important because that disease is the leading cause of severe diarrhea in children. Globally, diarrhea is one of the two top killers of children under five. Rotavirus-related diarrhea wipes out more than half a million children every year.
Despite the World Health Organization’s 2009 recommendation that rotavirus vaccines be included in all national vaccination programs, impoverished countries cannot afford them without help.
SOS Inoculates Children Around the World
Providing medical care and basic immunizations is part of the SOS Children’s Villages mission to raise and protect vulnerable children in 132 countries.
For example, at the SOS Children’s Village in the Ivory Coast town of Aboisso, the 136 children remain healthy, in part, because they receive vaccines against hepatitis B, meningitis (A and C), A H1N1 flu, and yellow fever. As reported by the director of SOS-Aboisso, SOS mothers and staff work hard to protect children against disease. They have installed all ten family homes with water filters and with window screens to prevent mosquito entry. SOS children who fall ill are seen by specialist doctors in the city of Abidjan, about 50 miles away.
The SOS’s Children’s Village at Aboisso also has its own clinic, where a doctor who regularly visits provides the children with physicals and medical care.
Help Us Keep Children Healthy
Children fortunate enough to be brought to SOS-Aboisso and other SOS Children’s Villages around the world receive a loving home, an education, and the support of a whole community dedicated to their health and well-being.
Help us keep the children under our care healthy. Just $90 can provide medical care for 10 children for a year in Africa.