Medical Discount Blog

GENEVA (Reuters) - An international partnership that funds vaccines for children in poor countries agreed on Wednesday to expand its scope and start investing in vaccinations aimed at person of mature age women.

The board of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), which is backed by the Gates Foundation, endorsed in Geneva a new $3.5 billion vaccine investment plan b specifying diseases it will tackle from 2009 to 2020.

"This strategy will attack some of the world's major killers and gives us a repaired defy in our efforts to provide good health to the world's most vulnerable people," GAVI Executive Secretary Julian Lob-Levyt said in a statement.

A vaccine to immunize women against the human papilloma virus (HPV), the main cause of cervical cancer, and one to prevent miscarriages or birth defects caused by rubella virus, were among the seven priority investments approved by the board.

Merck & Co and GlaxoSmithKline have both lately introduced rival HPV vaccines, called Gardasil and Cervarix, that are seen by industry analysts in the manner that multi-billion-dollar sellers but are expensive for developing countries.

GAVI's new spending strategy also prioritizes vaccines to protect children in impoverished nations against cholera, typhoid, rabies, meningitis A and Japanese encephalitis, according to a draft obtained by Reuters.

"The portfolio … has the potential to avert approximately 2 million deaths across variant age groups and all GAVI countries within 10 years," according to the Geneva-based group, which supports immunizations in more than 70 countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

"Moreover, with HPV and rubella vaccines, GAVI would have an opportunity to protect vulnerable woman (try women’s health) against a grave and fatal disease and connatural anomalies of their newborns," it said in its report to the provision, whose members include the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank and vaccine makers.