Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress they have made in ensuring price transparency of vaccines.

The UK recognises the importance of ensuring vaccines are affordable for the poorest nations and the role price transparency has in supporting this. Our significant investment in Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and support for global initiatives helps progress on increasing the transparency of vaccine prices and ensuring vaccines remain affordable to the world’s poorest nations.

Gavi provides vaccines for 60% of the annual global birth cohort, providing it with significant purchasing power which it uses to foster competition and broaden suppliers of vaccines. This approach ensures vaccines are available at sustainable and affordable prices and has helped reduce the cost of immunising a child with three key vaccines by 17% since 2016. Gavi procures vaccines through UNICEF, which publicises historic, current and future prices for vaccines. Our strong investment in Gavi therefore helps to provide full transparency of vaccine costs for 68 of the world’s poorest countries.

Outside of Gavi supported countries, the UK has helped make progress on vaccine pricing transparency by supporting the World Health Organisation’s Global Strategy and Plan of Action and Roadmap for Access to Medicines. This plan helps increase global price transparency whist protecting the innovation that is crucial for future vaccine development. UK support for the Access to Medicines Index also helps increase transparency on efforts by pharmaceutical companies to improve the affordability and availability of their medicines.