China Positions Itself to Become Major Vaccine Provider

Daily News Article — Posted on December 5, 2011

(by Gillian Wong, WashingtonTimes.com) BEIJING (AP) – The world should get ready for a new “Made in China” product – vaccines. China’s vaccine makers are gearing up over the next few years to push exports in a move that should lower costs of lifesaving immunizations for the world’s poor and provide major new competition for the big Western pharmaceutical companies.

However, it may take some time before some parts of the world are ready to embrace Chinese products when safety is as sensitive an issue as it is with vaccines – especially given the food, drug and other scandals the country has seen.

Still, China’s entry into this market will be a “game changer,” said Nina Schwalbe, head of policy at the GAVI Alliance [formerly the “Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation], which buys vaccines for 50 million children a year worldwide.

“We are really enthusiastic about the potential entry of Chinese vaccine manufacturers,” she said.

…In March the World Health Organization [WHO] announced that China’s drug safety authority meets international standards for vaccine regulation. It opened the doors for Chinese vaccines to be submitted for WHO approval so they can be bought by U.N. agencies and the GAVI Alliance.

“China is a vaccine-producing power” with more than 30 companies that have an annual production capacity of nearly 1 billion doses – the largest in the world, the country’s State Food and Drug Administration told the Associated Press.

But more needs to be done to build confidence in Chinese vaccines overseas, said Helen Yang of Sinovac, the Nasdaq-listed Chinese biotech firm that rapidly developed the H1N1 swine flu vaccine. “We think the main obstacle is that we have the name of ‘Made in China’ still. That is an issue.”

China’s food and drug safety record in recent years hardly inspires confidence:

• In 2007, Chinese cough syrup killed 93 people in Central America.

• In 2008, contaminated blood thinner led to dozens of deaths in the United States, while tainted milk powder poisoned hundreds of thousands of Chinese babies and killed six.

The government has since imposed more regulations, stricter inspections and heavier punishments for violators. Perhaps because of that, [Chinese government?] regulators routinely crack down on counterfeit and substandard drugmaking.

While welcoming WHO’s approval of China’s drug safety authority, one expert said it takes more than a regulatory agency to keep drugmakers from cutting corners or producing fakes.

“In the U.S., we have supporting institutions such as the market economy, democracy, media monitoring, civil society, as well as a well-developed business ethics code, but these are all still pretty much absent in China,” said Yanzhong Huang, a China health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “For China, the challenge is much greater in building a strong, robust regulative capacity.”

Last year, a Chinese newspaper report linked improperly stored vaccines to four children’s deaths in northern Shanxi province, raising nationwide concern. The Health Ministry said the vaccines did not cause the deaths, but some remained skeptical.

Meanwhile, Chinese researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this year that a pandemic flu vaccine given to 90 million people in 2009 was safe.

WHO’s medical officer for immunization, Dr. Yvan Hutin, said WHO’s approval of the Chinese drug regulatory agency is not “a blank check.” Each vaccine will be evaluated rigorously, with WHO and Chinese inspectors given access to vaccine plants on top of other safety checks, he said.

Vaccines historically have been a touchy subject in the Western world, rife with safety concerns and conspiracy theories. Worries about vaccine safety resurfaced in the late 1990s triggered by debate over a claimed association between the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella and autism. The claim was…discredited [recently].

For China, the next few years will be crucial, as biotech companies upgrade their facilities and improve procedures to meet the safety and quality standards – a process that is expected to be costly and challenging.

Then they will submit vaccines to the U.N. health agency for approval, which could take a couple of years.

First up is likely to be a homegrown vaccine for Japanese encephalitis, a mosquito-borne disease that can cause seizures, paralysis and death. The vaccine has been used for two decades in China with fewer side effects than other versions.

Its manufacturer expects WHO approval for it in about a year. Also in the works are vaccines for polio and diseases that are the top two killers of children – pneumonia and rotavirus, which causes diarrhea.

Vaccines also are a significant part of a $300 million partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the development of new health and farming products for poor countries.

China’s entry into this field is important because one child dies every 20 seconds from vaccine-preventable diseases each year.

UNICEF, the children’s agency and the world’s biggest buyer of vaccines, has been in talks with Chinese companies, said its supply director Shanelle Hall. The fund provides vaccines to nearly 60 percent of the world’s children, and last year spent about $757 million.

Worldwide, vaccine sales last year grew 14 percent to $25.3 billion, according to health care market research firm Kalorama Information, as drugmakers that face intensifying competition from generic drugs now see vaccines as key areas of growth, particularly in Latin America, China and India.

Background

The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. The WHO's constitution states that its objective "is the attainment by all people of the highest possible level of health." Its major task is to combat disease, especially key infectious diseases, and to promote the general health of the people of the world. (from wikipedia)
The GAVI Alliance(formerly the “Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation”) is a public-private global health partnership committed to saving children’s lives and protecting people’s health by increasing access to immunization in poor countries. The Alliance brings together developing country and donor governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine industry in both industrialized and developing countries, research and technical agencies, civil society, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other private philanthropists. (from wikipedia)
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) was created by the United Nations General Assembly in 1946. UNICEF provides long-term humanitarian and developmental assistance to children and mothers in developing countries. UNICEF relies on contributions from governments and private donors and UNICEF's total income for 2006 was $2,781,000,000. As of 2007, around 60% of the funding was from government donors, 30% from private sector (including individual donations). The rest comes from organizations such as other UN agencies, NGOs, other international organizations.
In 2007 the US government contributed around 9% of the total budget.
(from the 2007 UNICEF annual report: unicef.org/publications/index_44268.html)