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By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent
LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The World Health Organization,drugmakers and humanitarian groups are hammering out details ofa new vaccine supply system aimed at getting vital shots tovulnerable people in crises such as wars or natural disasters.
The mechanism, which so far has British drugmakerGlaxoSmithKline signed up to provide its pneumoniavaccine at the lowest possible price, will ask other majorpharmaceutical firms including Pfizer and Merck to make similar cut-price agreements for emergencies only.
"The idea is that this will set a model in place for othermanufacturers to put their vaccines on the table," said GregElder, a medical coordinator with the international charityMedecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) which joined talks on the issueat the WHO's Geneva headquarters last week.
A spokesman for the WHO said the humanitarian vaccinemechanism - which would only be used in crisis situations -could mean reaching millions of vulnerable people withprotective shots against potential killers such as measles,yellow fever and pneumonia.
For now, GSK has pledged to make its PCV-10 vaccine forpneumococcal infection available at its lowest possible price,he said, and other manufacturers are considering which of theirshots might also be included.
Signing up would mean drugmakers agreeing to supply theshots at a price equivalent to that paid by the United Nationschildren's fund UNICEF for vaccines supplied under the GAVIVaccines Alliance to low and middle-income countries who can'tafford to pay full price.
Yet unlike GAVI, the cheaper emergency vaccines would beaccessible only to non-governmental organisations such as MSFand other charities and humanitarian groups - not to healthministries or national authorities.
This, said MSF's Elder, will ensure drugmakers are notexposed to having to supply large quantities of vaccines atrock-bottom prices that could dent their profits.
"We're talking about a very specific cohort - refugees,displaced populations, people who have gone through a lot oftrauma and have had to flee their homes," Elder said.
"It's a small group of people who are caught in the middleof emergencies and can fall through the gaps. And it's a minutefraction of their (the drug companies') global market."
The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers& Associations (IFPMA) and the Developing Countries VaccineManufacturers Network (DCVMN), who took part in the talks"expressed great interest" and said they would take the idea totheir members, according to Noni MacDonald, an immunisationspecialist and professor of paediatrics at Canada's DalhousieMedical School, who chaired the meeting.
Philippe Duclos, a senior WHO expert on immunisation, saidthe hope is that the mechanism will ultimately cover some 23shots against diseases ranging from cholera to rabies to polioto hepatitis to yellow fever.
"Of course some vaccines are more important in certainemergencies than in others," he said. "What we need is torationalise, quickly, in each emergency, which ones are needed."
MacDonald said that while there is a way to go to agreeprices and supplies, she is confident that starting with GSK'spneumococcal shot will show how the system can work for others.
"It's rare to have such disparate groups come together sosolidly to support the way forward," she told Reuters.
"It's going to take a lot of effort and education to makethis process work, but we're all agreed it's important - andfailure to deliver is not an option because lives depend upongetting this done right." (Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
