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Vaccines - Actions

 

• Polio eradication
• Combating yellow fever
• Funding the EPIVAC program
• GAVI partnership

Polio eradication

Sanofi pasteur is one of the partners to the World Health Organization (WHO) in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Over the years, sanofi pasteur has donated 120 million doses of vaccines to African countries. 

In 2005, sanofi pasteur provided over 350 million doses of oral polio vaccine (OPV). 

In 2004-2005, sanofi pasteur registered and produced, in record time, the monovalent type 1 OPV required by WHO for the final stages of eradication in Southern Asia and Egypt.  

Combating yellow fever

Development of a multi-dose presentation of the vaccine designed especially for widespread utilization in endemic countries.

In the northern hemisphere, the yellow fever vaccine is generally given only to travelers. Nevertheless, sanofi pasteur has developed a multi-dose presentation of this vaccine designed especially for widespread utilization in countries where the disease is endemic. Sanofi pasteur is one of the primary suppliers of the yellow fever vaccine, both for UNICEF and in order to build an emergency stockpile, enabling a rapid response in the event of an outbreak. 

To help countries organize yellow fever immunization campaigns and prevent epidemics, sanofi-aventis and sanofi pasteur support initiatives by the Agency for Preventive Medicine (AMP), such as the meeting about the utilization of the yellow fever vaccine, organized in December 2006 in Bamako, Mali, in partnership with WHO. Sanofi-aventis and sanofi pasteur's involvement in this meeting, which brought together 50 people from eight West African countries, is fully in line with their determination to do more than supply vaccines by ensuring they are used properly by the countries that need them.   

Funding the EPIVAC program

A training program for healthcare professionals

Supplying vaccines at affordable prices is indispensable, but much of the cost of immunization is related to factors other than their purchase price. Vaccines must be stored at carefully controlled temperatures, from the time they are manufactured right up to the moment a person is vaccinated. They must be administered under aseptic conditions and given to the age groups that correspond to the local epidemiology of a given disease. As a result, those who administer vaccines must be trained in how to use them properly. Within the scope of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) partnership, and thanks to collaboration with the Agency for Preventive Medicine, sanofi pasteur finances the EPIVAC Program, which trains public health leaders working in West Africa. Since 2002, more than 195 people from eight countries have received training thanks to this program. At the end of their training participants receive an interuniversity degree awarded jointly by the universities of Paris-Dauphine and Abidjan-Cocody.  

• Go to the EPIVAC website (in French)

GAVI partnership

Bridging the gap between North and South

Until the beginning of the 1990s, the vaccines used throughout the world were essentially identical, which made it possible, thanks to higher prices in industrialized countries, to supply vaccines to the poorest countries based on systems adapted to their resources. Today vaccines are produced using more sophisticated technologies (for example, acellular pertussis, conjugated pneumococcal and Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccines). In addition, combination vaccines have been developed. For these new vaccines, development and manufacturing generate higher costs than for previous generations of vaccines. This has gradually led to the development of a vaccine offer adapted to the needs and resource levels of wealthy countries, which cannot be offered to the poorest countries at an acceptable price in light of their limited resources.

One of the main goals of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), created in 2000 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, WHO, UNICEF and vaccine producers, is specifically to bridge the gap between rich countries and poor countries and keep it from growing larger when it comes to access to the most innovative vaccines. GAVI's aim, which sanofi pasteur shares, is not only to supply vaccines at affordable prices, but also to improve the infrastructures necessary for them to be administered properly and to encourage research and development programs on diseases that especially affect developing countries.  

• Go to the GAVI Alliance website