Serum Institute of India and Bilthoven Biologicals, The Netherlands (also owned by Serum), have cut prices of the Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) by 50% and made it available at a subsidised price to the Unicef.
The price of IPV was reduced from the prevailing price of $4 in the market in the recent tender bid with Unicef. This move has triggered a global reduction in price of IPV, Serum Institute said on Tuesday.
The Serum Institute said it had stepped-in to resolve the acute shortage of hundreds of million doses of IPV required by the UN agencies, at short notice and at affordable prices.
Bilthoven Biologicals has not only offered a special price for the poorer countries but extended this uniformly to all other 120 countries that were equally in need of this vaccine to be introduced for achieving the GPEI Endgame Strategic Plan 2013-2018, a Serum statement said.
This is part of Serum and Bilthoven Bio?s plans to support the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) Endgame Strategic Plan 2013-2018. Roeland van Dam, CEO of Bilthoven Biologicals, said this was the first such reduction in IPV price and it was possible solely due to the financial subsidisation of the cost provided by Serum Institute of India.
Dr Cyrus S Poonawalla, chairman of Serum Institute, said this price reduction was in keeping with his commitment to the WHO to make available polio vaccine as affordable as possible and with the R&D efforts he was confident that the price of IPV will further reduce in the future.
