GSK price cut – a landmark move against needless child deaths

Last week our global partner, pharmaceutical giant GSK, outlined its commitment to reinvest 20% of its profits back into some of the world’s poorest countries, allowing us to provide improved healthcare across west Africa.

Today, it has gone even further in the fight against needless child deaths by offering a price reduction on its new diarrhoea vaccine to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI).

The move echoes price reductions by other drug companies announced today, a week before the crucial London vaccines summit.

Welcome news

Welcoming the announcement Save the Children’s Chief Executive, Justin Forsyth said: “GSK’s price reduction for its new diarrhoea vaccine is a landmark move, potentially saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of children.

“Diarrhoea kills more of the world’s poorest children than aids, measles and malaria combined, and many parents in the developing world know all too well the pain of losing a child to this illness.

“We now have the prospect of dramatically cutting those needless deaths, by immunising against the virus which causes so many of them.

“It’s important that GAVI now uses this to spur other vaccine producers to reduce prices and work to foster greater competition amongst producers to drive prices down even further and help even more children.”

Sign our petition calling on world leaders to save four million lives in four hours by fully funding GAVI’s plans.

GSK is funding new and existing projects in Yemen, Sierra Leone and Niger as part of its commitment to reinvest 20% of the profits it makes in poor communities across the world.

The money we receive will allow us to train and support frontline health workers, potentially improving access to basic healthcare for thousands of vulnerable women and children in communities across the three countries.

Delivering health care

In some settings, a fully trained and well-supported health worker can reach up 5,000 children in a year – delivering treatments and health education for common childhood illnesses such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria, and for acute malnutrition.

The chronic shortage of trained frontline healthcare workers in the world’s poorest countries is recognised as one of the most fundamental constraints to achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals.

For more on GSK’s price reduction

For more on GSK’s 20% Reinvestment Programme