Private sector needs incentives for AIDS vaccine

Editor—Tucker and Mazithulela are right to identify the need to increase involvement of the private sector in the quest for a preventive vaccine for HIV/AIDS.¹ Pharmaceutical companies are best placed to come up with vaccines and crucial new treatments for AIDS and other conditions for which no treatment exists, but as the major markets for such products are the poorest countries on the planet, there is little likelihood of a reasonable return on investment.

We therefore need to develop incentives that will bring the private sector into the hunt for a vaccine; these may include tax incentives on vaccine research, guaranteed volume sales, tiered pricing alongside anti-reimportation measures, public and intergovernment subsidies and philanthropic donations, and perhaps patent extensions could be offered on other products.

Big Pharma needs such carrots if it is to commit to HIV/AIDS busting vaccine research and development, rather than being damned if they do and damned if they don't—the current activist approach.

Another problem remains: the trickle-down pattern whereby product development is followed by the recouping of costs through profits in industrialised countries, after which prices drop and become affordable in poor countries decades later, is not viable for HIV/AIDS.

The rapid transport to and effective distribution of doses to the depths of sub-Saharan Africa—where about 27 million are living with HIV, and presenting a risk to countless millions of others—will take unprecedented commitment from and cooperation between civil society, which includes the private sector, and politicians.