Pneumonia drug patent is terrible for public health
Giving Pfizer sole right to manufacture this medication will put it out of reach of those who need it most
India’s Patent Office has dealt a major setback to hopes for improved access to an affordable pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) by granting a patent to the US pharmaceutical corporation, Pfizer, for its PCV13 product, marketed as Prevnar 13. The monopoly granted to Pfizer allows it to control the PCV13 market in India until 2026 and blocks Indian manufacturers from supplying a lower-priced version of this vaccine.
Pneumonia causes more than a quarter of deaths in children under the age of five – nearly one million young lives lost per year – whilst India, which carries the world’s highest burden of pneumonia, accounts for nearly 20% of global infant pneumonia deaths.
Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) presently control a duopoly market for PCV, the world’s best-selling vaccine that has brought in a whopping $39 billion in sales in the last eight years to the two pharmaceutical corporations. The high price tag and absence of competition has allowed these corporations to quickly capture over 50% of the private vaccine market in India.
Meanwhile, about one third of countries around the world (about 60 countries), predominantly low-and middle-income countries where millions of children risk getting pneumonia, have not yet been able to introduce the PCV in their national immunisation systems due to the exorbitant prices the two corporations charge – despite a 2007 World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation.
In 2016, with the aim of enabling and accelerating production of affordable PCV, MSF challenged Pfizer’s unmerited patent claims on the vaccine in India after the European Patent Office revoked the same patent judging it to be non-inventive. The patent is also under dispute in South Korea and before the US Patent Trademark Appeal Board.
The decision granting Pfizer a monopoly on the PCV13 could prove to have a deadly impact on public health. Manoeuvring to figure out new routes to develop a non-infringing PCV vaccine could delay the availability of cheaper drugs. In the absence of competition, the price of the pneumonia vaccine will remain inflated and out of reach for many parents and developing governments. At the lowest global price of nearly $10 a child, which isn’t accessible to most countries, it is now 68 times more expensive to vaccinate a child than in 2001.
In India, Pfizer’s PCV had until recently been available solely in the private market with an out-of-pocket price tag of over Rs.10,000, reducing the impact of the vaccine as it fails to reach the most vulnerable children. At this juncture, a lower-priced PCV is critically important to increase vaccine coverage across the country in the coming years.