Posts tagged vaccine
JonJon, 33 years old from the US
I will never forget the MONTH I had pneumonia. It started on a cold Tuesday night in early December 2010. At the time I thought I was coming down with a cold, and by Thursday I was fully convinced I caught a bad flu. Little did I know by that Saturday morning I would be admitted into my local hospitals ER and diagnosed with streptococcus pneumonia.
I had a high fever, my vision was blurred, and time seemed to slow down with every breath I took as I struggled to fill my lungs with air. I literally felt like I was drowning, and I felt helpless. As the doctor put me under to calm me down, I remember still gasping for air to let my mom that I loved her and my family. I truly believed I was going to die.
I woke up days later from a medically induced coma, intubated to a machine that was breathing for me. I found out that my lungs had filled up so much with infection that only 1/3 of my right lung was capable in taking oxygen. For the next two weeks it was a battle between pneumonia and me.
I was taken off the machine and released home just before New Years Eve. Since I was bedridden, and deprived of solid food and water for a few weeks, I was left frail, and I could barely walk or stand on my own. My lung capacity was next to none and after I spoke a sentence I was out of breath as though I had been jogging for miles. Slowly but surely I made a full recovery.
I was thankful and blessed I made it through that experience, and I always say I would never wish pneumonia on anyone.
The reality of pneumonia can be very scary and dangerous. Each year, it takes the lives of nearly one million kids. There’s a vaccine to prevent it, but it’s too expensive for many countries to afford. That’s why we need #Pfizer and #GSK to drop the price to $5/child for all developing countries and humanitarian organizations. #AskPharma http://afairshot.org
When an outbreak of Yellow Fever struck Angola, MSF moved quickly to vaccinate the population in neighboring DRC to prevent the spread of the virus. Deploying dozens of teams composed of 900 staff to effectively administer vaccinations to over 370,000 locals within 10 days. Watch our video above to find out how we accomplished it.
MSF is running vaccination campaigns to protect almost 188,000 South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia’s Gambella region against pneumonia and other vaccine-preventable diseases.
A key tool in fighting child mortality in emergencies is the pneumonia vaccine, but it’s priced out of the reach of many humanitarian organizations and developing countries. Help us #AskPharma to lower the price of the pneumonia vaccine so all children get a fair shot. http://bit.ly/1I4Vt61
In 2015, our wish is for at least one safe and effective Ebola treatment and at least one safe and effective vaccine: http://ow.ly/G38a8
MSF Access: Dear GAVI Campaign
The ‘Decade of Vaccines,’ the global vaccination initiative for the next ten years, is estimated to cost US$57 billion, with more than half going to pay for the vaccines themselves. In 2001, it cost $1.37 to fully vaccinate a child against six diseases. While 11 vaccines are included in today’s vaccines package, the total price has risen to $38.80, largely because two expensive new vaccines – against pneumococcal disease and rotavirus – have been added, which make up three-quarters of that cost. They are only produced by Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and Merck. Newer vaccines are significantly more expensive: vaccinating a child against measles costs $0.25, while protecting a child against pneumococcal diseases costs, at best, $21.
Help MSF and send GAVI a message on Twitter asking for them to open up their lower prices to non-governmental organisations and humanitarian actors like MSF now.
MSF Access: Dear GAVI Campaign
MSF vaccinates millions of people each year and fully supports the introduction of new vaccines in developing countries. But negotiations between companies and the largely taxpayer-funded GAVI Alliance for the newest vaccines have not resulted in deeper price cuts that would help more children benefit. The lack of transparency by companies on vaccine manufacturing costs and their focus on profits above ensuring sustainable prices for vaccines for low-income countries are at the root of the problem.
Help MSF and send GAVI a message on Twitter asking for them to open up their lower prices to non-governmental organisations and humanitarian actors like MSF now.
MSF Access: Dear GAVI Campaign
“Urgent action is needed to address the skyrocketing price to vaccinate a child, which has risen by 2,700 percent over the last decade,” said Dr. Manica Balasegaram, Executive Director of MSF’s Access Campaign. “Countries where we work will lose their donor support to pay for vaccines soon, and will have to decide which killer diseases they can and can’t afford to protect their children against.”
Help MSF, send GAVI a message on Twitter asking for them to open up their lower prices to non-governmental organisations and humanitarian actors like MSF now.
Photo: MSF and Pakistani staff examine a patient in Dera Murad Jamali Hospital, where MSF is treating patients for measles-related complications. Pakistan 2011 © P.K. Lee/MSF
MSF Responds To Increase In Measles in Southwestern Pakistan
Cases of measles are on the rise in the eastern region of Pakistan’s Balochistan Province. An MSF medical team in Dera Murad Jamali has treated 159 patients since late December 2012, and two measles-related deaths have occurred in health facilities supported by MSF in the province’s Jaffarabad and Nasirabad districts.
To cope with the increasing number of patients, an eight-bed isolation unit has been set up in Dera Murad Jamali Hospital to treat patients with complications. Some 35 complicated cases have been treated over the past two weeks. Treatment kits have been distributed to locations where MSF runs mobile clinics, including Mir Hassan, Usta Mohammad, Dera Allah Yar, and Sobhat Pur.
“Our mobile medical teams are reaching out to communities to identify patients with measles symptoms in the catchment area of our supported health facilities,” says Dr. Muhammad Shoaib, MSF’s medical coordinator in Pakistan. “Patients are then referred for treatment aimed at preventing complications such as respiratory infections.”
There has been an increase in the number of recorded measles cases across Pakistan over the past two months. “Measles is an extremely contagious illness,” says Dr. Shoaib. “If not treated in time, it may result in serious medical complications and even death, especially amongst malnourished patients. In eastern Balochistan, where malnutrition rates are relatively high, the chance of complications is high.”
Photo: Mothers await vaccinations for their children at the Bumpe Government Clinic in Bo District. Sierra Leone 2012 © Lynsey Addario/VII
Governments meeting at the World Health Organization’s Executive Board this week must seize the opportunity to improve serious shortcomings in the document that will drive the global community’s vaccines response for the next decade. If they fail to do so, some of the key reasons for why millions of children continue to die of vaccine preventable causes will be left unaddressed.
Countries will decide how to assess the success and steer the activities of the “Global Vaccine Action Plan,” a $50-billion vaccine initiative for the developing world. Although the high price of some vaccines threatens many countries’ abilities to sustain its vaccine programs, the Vaccine Action Plan so far does not include any measures to monitor or control prices.
“The cost of vaccinating a child has risen by 2,700 percent over the last decade, so it is puzzling that the vaccines blueprint for the next decade does not have a goal to bring prices down,” said Dr. Manica Balasegaram, executive director of MSF’s Access Campaign. “Governments in countries where we work are increasingly worried about how they will foot the bill for vaccines when donor support tapers off.”
Photo: The inpatient therapeutic feeding center in the Dera Murad Jamali District Headquarters Hospital in eastern Balochistan Pakistan 2011 © P.K. Lee/MSF
MSF Condemns Targeting of Health Workers in Pakistan
Regardless of the parties or individuals responsible for the recent escalation of attacks against health workers in Pakistan, both patients and medical workers risk losing their lives while seeking or providing health care.
As a medical humanitarian organization working in Pakistan since 1986, and currently operating activities throughout the country, MSF condemns the attacks on medical workers and strongly reiterates the need to fully respect the medical mission by ensuring the safety and security of patients, medical staff, and health facilities.
“A hospital or a vaccination site needs to be a safe location where medics can perform their duty, and patients can receive the urgent assistance they need,” said Arjan Hehenkamp, MSF general director. “We call on all actors to restore the respect for the medical act.”
Acceptance from all communities and political and military groups is the only way medical actors, including MSF, can work in Pakistan. This acceptance is based on the fact that medical activities have a singular objective: the provision of impartial medical care to anyone in need, and based on need alone.
Already fragile perception and acceptance of vaccination in Pakistan was further undermined last year by the alleged misuse of vaccinations by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, in its attempt to gather intelligence leading to the killing of Osama Bin Laden.
MSF does not carry out mass vaccination campaigns in the country, despite the significant need for them.
“The reality is that in our facilities, we are treating people suffering from preventable conditions,” said Hehenkamp. “Part of the solution is to conduct mass vaccinations, but we simply cannot consider it within this climate of rumors and suspicion, which is deadly for both patients and health workers.”
Since 1986, MSF has been working in Pakistan with Pakistani communities and Afghan refugees who are survivors of armed conflict and natural disasters, or who lack access to medical care. MSF teams provide free emergency medical care in Kurram Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and Sindh provinces.
Photo: Patients in the waiting area at Koutiala Hospital in Mali. Mali 2012 © Venetia Dearden
Conference Briefing Paper: Medical Innovations for Neglected Patients
There are three fundamental problems with medical innovation today.
First, global public health needs are not in the driving seat. Regardless of how great the needs may be, where commercial potential is weak, there is little “pull” to develop new technologies. The innovation cycle is broken, with few or no incentives for the development of effective, safe, quality, suitable and affordable health technologies—leading to needless suffering and death.
Second, as a result, developing countries must often “make do” with innovation that primarily caters to conditions in developed countries. Medical tools are too often developed first for developed countries and only rolled out in resource limited settings in a second stage.
Third, even when there is enough of a profit incentive to drive innovation—for example when diseases affect both developed and developing countries alike—the resulting products are too often priced out of reach.
Medical innovation must aim to change practice, for the benefit of patients. But ideas, knowledge and inventions can only benefit patients who have access to the fruits of innovation. What is needed, therefore, is not just innovation—but both innovation and access.
Easier-to-Use Vaccines Are Needed for Hard-to-Reach Children
“Unless vaccines are simplified so that they’re better adapted to real-life conditions, we will never get on top of these killer diseases and will always need to respond to outbreaks that we haven’t managed to prevent through effective immunization programs."—Florence Fermon, MSF Vaccines Adviser
Immunization is one of the most effective ways of saving young lives, yet every year one in five children born—22 million—is left without this basic protection from disease. Why?
It’s because existing vaccines are hard to use in the places where many of these children live. The problem with the vaccines currently available—both basic and newer vaccines—is that they have been developed for use in wealthy countries, with strong health systems, good transport and other functioning infrastructure. In trying to use these vaccines in countries which don’t have the advantages of good roads, reliable power supplies, and adequate numbers of trained staff, it becomes clear why so many children in developing countries fall through the immunization net.
Photo: An MSF staff member vaccinates a child for measles. DRC 2008 © Anna Surinyach
MSF at the GAVI Alliance “Partners’ Forum” Vaccination Conference, Tanzania, December 5–7, 2012
MSF is deeply concerned that the current global vaccination strategy is not paying enough attention to reaching the one in five babies born each year that continue to go without the very basic vaccination package. MSF sees the direct effect of the failures in basic vaccination when massive outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases emerge in places where we work. In 2010 in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone, MSF vaccinated more than four million people for measles in response to outbreaks that would not be happening if routine immunization were working well. The global number of babies not fully vaccinated rose from 19 million in 2010 to 22.4 million in 2012—there’s an urgent need to address this situation.
The approach being taken in the vaccines blueprint being launched for the next ten years—the “Global Vaccine Action Plan” and “Decade of Vaccines"—does not adequately emphasize the need to strengthen basic immunization. Developing vaccines that are better adapted to reach children in remote or unstable locations—vaccines that do not require refrigeration, do not require needles, and that can be given in fewer doses—is not being prioritized enough. Better products are needed to alleviate the growing number of un-immunized children. GAVI should play a role in the development of adapted products, but to date, it has not done so.
There’s no reason children should still be dying of vaccine-preventable diseases. The global vaccines community could be doing a lot better to make sure all babies in developing countries are fully vaccinated against killer diseases. We need vaccines that are easier to use in hard-to-reach places.
Photo: An MSF staff member vaccinates a child for measles. DRC 2008 © Anna Surinyach
GAVI Needs to Offer Lower Vaccine Prices to Humanitarian Groups
The GAVI Alliance should systematically extend the discounted vaccine prices it obtains from pharmaceutical companies to humanitarian organizations that are often well placed to reach unvaccinated children, MSF said today at the GAVI Partners Forum meeting in Tanzania. Currently, humanitarian groups such as MSF are not able to obtain vaccines at GAVI prices, and are left to negotiate access to vaccines on a cumbersome case-by-case basis.
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