Pfizer to sell low-cost vaccines in world’s poorest countries

Yahoo Finance reporter Anjalee Khemlani details how Pfizer is trying to maintain vaccine equity by offering various vaccines at a low cost in the world's poorest areas.

Video transcript

JARED BLIKRE: All right, time to move on to Pfizer is looking to give some of the world's poorest countries access to its vaccines and drugs at a not-for-profit price. Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani joins us with all the details. Anj, details.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Gotcha, Jared. Yeah, so Pfizer really announced this today. It's a new approach to what we saw with the vaccine and equity that happened during the pandemic. And this is, really, their effort to sort of resolve that, in addition to, of course, you know, that manufacturing plant that they're starting up, which is set to produce in the second half of this year some COVID vaccines. So what they have told us is that they're now looking at making available, at non-for-profit pricing, 23 medicines and vaccines to treat infectious diseases, certain cancers, and rare inflammatory diseases. This includes about 1.2 billion people getting access in 45 countries.

And in addition to that, one of the biggest issues we saw through this pandemic was really the idea that, in addition to supply, it wasn't just a supply problem. It was also an infrastructure problem and an education problem. And so, getting to all of that, they're now also going to include expertise to support diagnosis, healthcare professional education and training, supply chain management, and other infrastructure enhancements. And this goes for not just all current drugs that they have, but also future patented drugs that are available in the US and the EU.

So that's really part of it. We've got five countries on board in Africa right now. That's Rwanda, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal, and Uganda. And those are the five to start off with in this new accord that they have. They're going to expand it to others, but they're going to take the learnings from these five in order to start setting it up, in order to build out for future for these other countries.

JULIE HYMAN: You know, critics had really pointed at Pfizer and had been pushing them, and Moderna, for that matter, to share the information. Not the vaccines themselves, but to share how the vaccines are developed and made. So I wonder if this is going to satisfy those critics and what this really does for the bigger issue of global vaccine inequity that is not going to go away.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Yeah, to that point, I mean, we've heard the criticisms about getting too late on board for building that manufacturing plant, right? That doesn't really solve the now problem. And they knew pretty early on that there was going to be some sort of issue. So, to that point, we also heard from the executive director of UNAIDS at the World Economic Forum, Winnie Byanyima, calling the vaccine inequity racism. Listen to what she had to say.

WINNIE BYANYIMA: A year and a half since the first doses of COVID were delivered, 75% of the people in high income countries, where-- which are predominantly white, are fully vaccinated. But only 13% of people in lower income countries, mostly Brown and Black, are not vaccinated. 75, 13-- wouldn't you call that racism?

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: So there you have it. In plain words, she's calling it out. And that's been really a concern among those critics, really, in how these companies distributed the vaccines early on, who they chose, which governments they chose to provide vaccines to first. So that's really all part of this. And we're seeing, for the first time, really, a lot of attention on this topic and maybe some helpful action.

JULIE HYMAN: At least, a move in the correct direction, perhaps. Thank you so much, Anjalee. I know you've been covering this closely. Appreciate it.