Experts call for fair vaccine pricing, not ‘random acts of charity’

Drug companies should stop using donations to atone those who cannot afford expensive vaccines and instead lower prices, argue experts in The BMJ. It follows a recent decision by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to refuse a donation of one million doses of Pfizer’s pneumonia vaccine for children caught in humanitarian emergencies. MSF judged it more important to press the company to lower the price that is the main obstacle to access. Pfizer has since announced a special price for the vaccine to humanitarian organisations, in line with GSK, the other producer of this type of vaccine. But in an editorial published today, Els Torreele at the Open Society Foundations in New York and Professor Mariana Mazzucato at the University of Sussex, argue that donations and benevolent price reductions for selected countries or populations “remain random acts of charity that do not get to the heart of the problem: the unacceptable commodification of...