Polio philanthropy

In January 2014, after three years without a new case, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative will formally declare India polio free, notes an article in The Economist dated July 19, 2013. And playing a significant part in making this happen is Dr Cyrus Poonawalla whose Serum Institute of India will provide an injectable polio vaccine (IPV) at a loss — at least for a while. The 73-year-old billionaire horse breeder from Poona who founded the Serum Institute in 1966 has attracted the attention of Microsoft founder Bill Gates whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is working to eradicate the crippling disease. The high volume low cost business model will help replace the currently in vogue oral polio vaccine which carries the live virus with the more effective but also more expensive IPV. When Gates met Poonawalla in 2012 their conversation over dinner led the latter to purchase a Dutch pharma company, Bilthoven Biologicals which manufactures IPV, resulting in Poonawalla becoming a principal supplier of this type of vaccine, reveals The Economist.

Dr Cyrus Poonawalla: a cheaper option

At present Sanofi Pasteur and Gla- xoSmithKline are the main producers of IPV sold to UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) for more than five dollars (Rs 300) per dose, Poonawalla informed the magazine. Serum Institute will now offer it for about half that price, and he wants to further "crash”

the price to $ 1.60 (Rs 96). The steep drop will be offset by the fact that with larger quantities being purchased, it will become financially viable. The short term reduction of price is a "gesture of philanthropy” as the company will be selling the vaccine at a loss. But it will also upset the competition pushing them to do more to help countries to make the transition from the oral vaccine to the more expensive IPV. "Unless a manufacturer from the developing world challenges the status quo,” Poonawalla reasons, "there will not be a cheaper option.”