There is perhaps no single medical intervention that produces so much benefit for such little cost as a vaccine. A village lies nestled in the bush on the road between Jos and Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, where a once-robust immunization system is in shambles. And there is no one who needs vaccines more desperately than the impoverished children of the developing world. But there's a catch. Vaccines need to be cheap.
Industry needs to make money.
There is little profit margin in preventing diseases of the Third World, Stephenne said, and the demand for vaccines in developing nations has been too inconsistent for industry to invest in any large-scale manufacturing. There have been scientific and logistical obstacles to finding an effective vaccine against the scourge. But the root of the problem has been politics and money. Uncertain donor support for children's vaccines, combined with the dysfunctional politics of global health during the 1990s, made drug companies leery of vaccines, said Dr. Regina Rabinovich, director of the Gates-funded Malaria Vaccine Initiative. That leeriness, in turn, undermined research and development in vaccines.