Two years after launching a plan to make its medicines available to 45 low-income countries at not-for-profit prices, Pfizer has only signed up 10 of the countries on its list.
The programme, which Pfizer called “An Accord for a Healthier World”, launched in 2022 and was expanded to cover more products in 2023, reports Reuters.
The goal was to offer poorer nations affordable access to its entire portfolio of drugs and vaccines, including bestsellers like blood thinner Eliquis and cancer drug Ibrance, as well as new products.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the progress was slower than he had hoped because “few countries are really mobilising themselves to bring the products in”.
“It is extremely challenging in terms of bureaucracy,” he added. “They need to change the process of how they’re going to procure and they need to register the products, and those are the bottlenecks.”
Many of the countries initially listed, from South Sudan to Myanmar, face significant competing challenges, including conflict, natural disaster and disease outbreaks.
Five countries – Rwanda, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal and Uganda – committed to joining the accord in 2022. Rwanda received the first shipment of 1 500 treatment courses for infectious diseases, inflammatory diseases and some cancers in September that year, but there have been no further details on drugs or vaccines delivered since.
A Rwandan health official said it had expanded the number of products it could buy from Pfizer from eight to 20, and was working with the company on accessing more.
“Rwanda has moved quickly,” said Julien Mahoro Niyingabira, a spokesperson for Rwanda’s Ministry of Health.
Pfizer is also in talks with another 10 countries to join the programme, but had not spoken directly to all of the countries it hoped would join, relying instead in some cases on countries showcasing the programme to their neighbours.
Bourla said many of them are most interested in Pfizer’s off-patent products, like sterile injectables – products used regularly in hospitals, including basic tools like saline drips.
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