Newsletter No. 5

Berlin, September 28^th, 2011

Summit 2011

World Health Summit 2011 | October 23rd-26th, 2011 | Berlin, Germany

Speaker Update

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

See the list of all confirmed speakers here.

Personalities

Michel Sidibé, Executive Director, UNAIDS, Geneva Switzerland

Michel Sibidé has an extensive background in global health and development spanning over the past thirty years. Since 2009 Michel Sidibé has been holding his current position as Executive Director of UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. He is committed to transforming UNAIDS into a results-oriented organization and to supporting countries to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support and to meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

His passion for advancing global health began in his home country Mali where, as a young man he became concerned with the health and welfare of the nomadic Tuareg people. His tireless efforts to improve their health and welfare evolved into a role as country director for the international development policy based children’s aid organisation Terre des Hommes.

In 1987, Michel Sidibé began his service with the United Nations working for UNICEF in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Since then his career has been characterized by a series of international leadership roles. In his fourteen years at UNICEF, he oversaw programmes across ten francophone countries in Africa and served as a UNICEF country representative in several African countries, including in some of Africa’s most complex duty situations such as in Swaziland, Burundi and Uganda.

Michel Sidibé joined UNAIDS in 2001 and was appointed Deputy Executive Director of Programmes and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations. With this new mandate, he led UNAIDS’ contributions to regional and country responses as well as its efforts in global policies, evidence, monitoring and evaluation. In addition, Michel Sidibé spearheaded the Global Task Team on improving AIDS coordination among multilateral donors and international donors to further strengthen the AIDS response in countries.

Among his further significant career achievements are his efforts to develop the first-ever network of people li­­ving with HIV in Burundi and convening one of the first agreements on price reductions for antiretroviral drugs in Africa.

Mr Sidibé was named one of the 50 personalities of the year from the fields of science, politics, economics and civil society in 2009 by the newspaper Le Monde and in 2007 he was awarded an honorary professorship at Stellenbosch University of South Africa. He is a Knight of the National Order of the Legion of Honour of France, an Officer of the National Order of Mali and was awarded an Order of Saint-Charles by Monaco.

Mr Sidibé holds advanced academic degrees in economics, international development and social planning. In recognition of his achievements in the field of AIDS, he was awarded an honorary professorship at the prestigious Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

Michel Sidibé will give a Keynote Lecture on October 25^th, 9.00-10.00 and will be chair and speaker in the Working Session on “HIV/AIDS: New Technologies and their Place in Prevention” on Tuesday, October 25^th 2011, 10.15-11.45

Session Highlights

Symposium and Panel Discussion on Vaccines

Vaccination is undoubtedly one of the most cost-effective public health care measures. Especially in countries with limited access to health care they can prevent human suffering by combating infectious diseases. Currently, every 4 seconds, one child’s life is saved by vaccination. Yet, every 5 seconds, one child still dies of a vaccine-preventable disease, mostly in the southern half of the globe. This represents 14% of global total mortality in children under 5 years of age. Therefore development, improvement and delivery of vaccination should remain highly ranked on the world’s research agenda. To increase research efforts for new vaccines, novel strategies including public –private partnerships and product development partnerships need to be exploited.

Recent advances in biomedical sciences and translational medicine are now providing the knowledge-base and technological tools to develop a new generation of vaccines.

We need global access to newly developed products, notably vaccines, at an affordable price. Such ambitious goals can only be accomplished by closer cooperation of public funders, governmental, inter-governmental, and non-governmental organizations, private industry and philanthropic foundations. To facilitate such cross-sectoral collaborations the World Health Summit has established an annual forum for leaders from academia, industry, governments and civil society.

Partner Symposium

Vaccines for the 21^st Century: Roadblocks and Opportunities

Monday, October 24^th, 10.15-13.30, Room “Koch”

Vaccination against infectious diseases and their sequels is undoubtedly one of the most cost-effective public health care interventions. Vaccination reduces the problems related to health care cost containment in the developed world. Moreover, in countries with limited access to health interventions, vaccines represent the key strategy to prevent the human suffering associated with infectious diseases. Among the roadblocks for the development of new and more efficient vaccines, gaps like fragmentary knowledge on immune clearance mechanisms, lack of validation tools and unpredictable host response can be mentioned. The BMBF meets this challenge by the foundation of the German Centre for Infection Research (GCIR) in this year. Vaccine core-related activities represent a cornerstone in the GCIR to meet current challenges in vaccinology. The aim of BMBF symposium is to mediate the dialogue between national and international professionals in vaccine research. We will discuss the major bottlenecks, current progress and vision in the area of vaccinology from the perspective of the academia, industry and non-governmental organizations.  

Chair:

• Carlos Guzman | Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research Braunschweig | Germany

Welcome Address (BMBF):

• Helge Braun | Parliamentary State Secretary | German Federal Ministry of Education and Research | Germany

Keynote Lecture - Perspective of Academia:

• John D. Clemens | Former Director- General | International Vaccine Institute | Republic of Korea

Keynote Lecture - Perspective of Industry:

• Christian Mandl | Head of Research and Global Head, Viral Vaccine Projects | Novartis | United States

  
 Keynote Lecture - Perspective of Private Foundations

• Regina Rabinovitch | Director of Global Health Infectious Diseases | Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation | United States

 Presentation

• Ulrike Protzer | Chair of virology and head of the Institute of Virology | Technical University Munich and Helmholtz Centre Munich | Germany
  
  
  
  

Panel Discussion

Bridging Health Gaps with Vaccines

Monday, October 24^th, 17.00-18.30, Room “Langenbeck”

Vaccines have markedly contributed to reduced mortalities over the last decades with the most notable achievement of bringing down childhood mortality to less than 9 million cases annually. Every 4 seconds, one child is saved by vaccination. Vaccines are highly cost efficient and often delivered at prices far below 1 euro. This holds true for many vaccines in use for decades and not subject to patent issues. Yet, with annual health spending below 25 euros in many poor countries vaccine delivery depends on financial support from donor organizations. More recent vaccines still under patent restrictions are more costly and need innovative strategies to achieve an affordable price for developing countries, such as dual price systems and advanced market commitments. Delivery of available vaccines to everybody independent of financial income is primarily a matter of supply and pricing. Yet, vaccines are missing for major infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and hepatitis C. Development of new vaccines against these threats are a matter of accelerated research and development (R&D). Of the estimated 200 billion euros spent on health research, only 1% is earmarked for vaccines against these major threats. Research activities need to be stimulated by innovative incentives. Until 2005, the vaccine market was a small segment of the total pharma market amounting to a total of ca. 12 billion USD in revenues annually. This is currently changing and the vaccine market has become the fastest growing segment in the pharma industry. However, this is mostly due to vaccines against novel targets, notably, for cancer therapy. Joint efforts by public and private sectors are needed to foster research and development for novel vaccines against diseases that pose an unequal burden on low income countries. On the long run, return of investment for R&D of novel vaccines as well as supply of available vaccines at an affordable price can be secured by reducing cost for treatment and loss of human resources. In stark contrast to the value of vaccines, are public concerns about vaccine safety, notably, in industrialized countries. To fulfill the expectations raised by the call to action for the new decade of vaccines, stakeholders of all areas, including national and international governmental and nongovernmental organizations, civil society, private sector, academia and philanthropic agencies, need to join forces to pave the way for provision of all vaccines to all.

Chair:

• Stefan H.E. Kaufmann | Director | Max-Planck Institute for Infection Biology | Germany

Panel Discussion:

• Marc Sprenger | Director | European Centre of Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) | Sweden

• Dagfinn Høybråten | Chair of the Board | GAVI | Switzerland

• Jane Waterman | CEO | International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) | Netherlands

• Jorge Kalil | Director | Instituto do Coracao HC – FMUSP | Brazil
  
  
  
  

World Health Summit Partners

GAVI Alliance

Today’s Science, Tomorrow’s Agenda: Immunization in the Developing World

With the increased use of vaccines in developing countries, science today is playing a critical role in protecting children’s health. But delegates to the World Health Summit might also consider that tomorrow's agenda will be to reach the final fifth of the world's children who - for a variety of reasons - still do not receive life-saving vaccines. Every year 1.7 million children die from vaccine-preventable diseases. And nearly all of these deaths occur in the developing world. The GAVI Alliance is a public-private partnership founded in 2000 to save children’s lives and protect people’s health by increasing access to immunization.

GAVI’s first decade has seen routine immunization coverage rise from 66% to 79% of infants in GAVI-supported countries and the immunization of an extra 288 million children. With GAVI support, developing countries have begun to introduce vaccines against the two biggest vaccine-preventable killers of children, pneumococcal disease and rotavirus, which together account for more than one million child deaths every year. And in the not so distant future, we can expect to see the introduction of vaccines against infectious diseases such as typhoid, rubella, and one day malaria too.

Immunization is crucial not just because it save lives, but because it has wider social and economic benefits too. A study performed in 2006 in Burkina Faso found that treating a case of meningitis A costs US$90, the equivalent of four months average income. Besides preventing death and disability, immunization against meningitis A will avoid expensive hospitalization, treatment, and enormous financial shock for many families. A new vaccine designed especially for Africa's meningitis belt costs less than 50 US cents.

But despite immunization’s enormous benefits, reaching the final fifth of children who do not receive this life-saving protection is still a daunting challenge. Weak health systems or a lack of political will can complicate the situation. And yet nothing is impossible.

In Bangladesh – one of the most populous countries in the world – supportive political leadership means that 94% of all infants now receive routine immunization. Hence, child mortality has dropped by two thirds since 1990.In Ethiopia’s remote western Gambella region, immunization coverage jumped from 40% to 71% within a single year. After non-governmental organizations supported by GAVI started repairing broken fridges, transporting vaccines to remote communities and -- for multidose vaccines -- encouraging parents to complete their children’s immunization schedule.With an aim to immunize a quarter billion children by 2015, the world needs healthier vaccine markets to ensure competition and stable supply. This means not just that they are more competitive but also that they are less vulnerable to any disruptions of supply.In 2001, GAVI bought vaccines from five manufacturers, including one from an emerging market. By 2010, the number of delivering manufacturers had increased to 13, of which seven were from emerging markets.More vaccine manufacturers means more competition and lower prices on key vaccines such as the hepatitis B vaccine, whose price dropped 68% in our first decade of work.A development model for the 21st century, the GAVI public-private partnership is delivering results. And tomorrow’s agenda is becoming the reality of today.

Contact

We are looking forward to seeing you at the World Health Summit 2011 in October!