The Future of the Vaccines in the World Perspective (Bert Knopper, NVI - Nederlands Vaccine Instituut)
The protection of people against infectious deceases is one of the big achievements in medical science in public health. Vaccines contribute to a decrease of incidents of infectious deceases around the world. The vaccine market is a relatively small but interesting market.
At the moment only 2% of the pharmaceutical market is related to vaccines, but the vaccine market is rapidly growing each year.
The current vaccine market can be characterized as a monopsony. Due to different merges in the recent years, there are only few big vaccine manufacturers in the market.
There is also a limited amount of substantial buyers. Usually governments are responsible for the procurement of vaccines, to cover their National Immunization Program.
However, also different international organizations play an important role in the procurement and distribution of vaccines worldwide.
Research & Development, innovation, quality control, GMP, overhead, staff, and material costs are costly and cover a substantial part of the final price per dose. Different trends show that the demand for safe and affordable vaccines will stay high and even increase.
Emerging countries play a critical role in the availability in the availability of these safe and affordable vaccines.