Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, whether her Department is taking steps to promote competition in the vaccines market.

Healthy vaccine markets are essential to provide adequate supplies of vaccines at affordable prices for poor countries. This, in turn, improves availability and drives demand for immunisation. The UK supports healthy vaccine market competition through our investment in Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

A core part of Gavi’s mission is to promote competition and reduce the cost of vaccines. Gavi now supports 17 manufacturers to provide critical vaccines at a lower cost. Many of these manufacturers are now based in low and middle income countries. This has successfully generated over US$764 million in cost savings in 2017 alone and has reduced the cost of immunising a child by 17% since 2016.

The UK also supports Gavi’s Advanced Market Commitment for Pneumococcal Vaccines (AMC), an innovative approach to fostering market competition. By incentivising investment in research and development in the pneumococcal vaccine, the AMC has expanded manufacturing capacity and helped develop a healthy pipeline for vaccine production. This has helped enable 143 million children in 58 countries to be vaccinated against severe pneumonia.