Vaccines enjoy renaissance in pharma industry/ SwissInfo

I told readers in November that I would be discussing the expanding vaccine industry at more length. Fortunately, the media have obliged with excellent articles explaining the financial forces driving development of increasing types and numbers of vaccines. Articles like the one below also hint at why physicians are being pressured to vaccinate more and more people. Here are snippets from SwissInfo:

“The market has almost tripled over the last eight to ten years,” Carsten Mantel, a medical officer in the World Health Organization’s Expanded Programme on Immunisation, told swissinfo.ch... Growth is probably more than twice as fast as the therapeutic drugs market.”

“There are five players in the world, including [Switzerland’s] Novartis that have jumped on the train to make vaccines because it also fits well into modern thinking about health care reforms,” explained Zurich Cantonal Bank senior analyst Michael Nawrath.

The thinking goes that if you can prevent a disease, you are saving exponential costs such as going to a doctor or a hospital stay. Nawrath also believes that more and more doctors will be urged by health authorities to carry out vaccinations based on the cost reduction, even though prices for vaccines might be considered high at present...