The Price of Life

Once more SOYMB blog can highlight that the pharmaceutical industry places profits before lives and no less than the Department of Health saysso, Although they themselves are guilty of squabbling over the price of a life.

 Talks between the Department of Health and the Swiss multinational Novartis have stalled and now mean months of delay in bringing the vaccine into the NHS’s child-immunisation programme. This could result in hundreds of children losing their lives or facing traumatic limb amputations. Today the Health Secretary’s team offered its account of the failure to make the vaccine available on the NHS, accusing the Swiss drug company of “holding the Government to ransom”. They said it was “seeking to turn a profit” which could not be accepted “because this would deny treatments to other patients”. Jeremy Hunt’s advisers ended months of near silence on the talks with Novartis when meningitis research groups were told this week that the process involved “difficult negotiations to agree a cost-effective price”.

Meningitis B is a potentially deadly bacterial infection that can lead to loss of limbs, brain damage, and even death. Meningitis B affects more than 600 people a year, mostly young babies and kills more under-5s than any other infectious disease. One on ten die, and a further 15% suffer serious after-effects like amputations, sight or hearing loss or brain damage. Young children are most susceptible because their immune systems are not fully developed, although anyone can die from it. Around 400 people have been infected since the spring.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron insists that he wants all Britons to have access to Bexsero, but in a "cost-effective" way. In March this year, the Government said the vaccine would be given free to babies and youngsters on the NHS once a price had been agreed with manufacturer Novartis. Negotiations with vaccine developer Novartis only began five months later, in August, and show no signs of concluding.The vaccine, which must be administered over three doses, would cost about the NHS at a cost of £75 each - £225 in total - and the annual cost to the NHS would be £150 million. Novartis has reportedly offered the government a discount on the drug, but no hard figures are available at this point.

Wealthy parents with two children are currently able to obtain private immunisation by paying more than £1,000. The mapping of private sales of the vaccine shows little uptake in the UK’s poorer areas, where the vaccine is most needed.