Legacy of Jenner and Pasteur needs to be carried forward

Abstract

Drugs control or cure a disease and provide relief in symptoms, but, vaccines prevent occurrence of the specific diseases, thus, development of vaccine was a landmark discovery. With advent of advanced technologies improved versions of some old vaccines and many new vaccines are available, but, these are very expensive vaccines. Development of new vaccines is not only a time consuming exercise, but an expensive venture also because studies regarding efficacy and safely are mandatory before a license to market the vaccine is issued. Overhead expenditures are incurred on transportation, storage and sale of the product. The governments also impose different taxes on the vaccines. All these expenses raise further the cost of vaccines. The great irony is that people belonging to low socio-economic strata are most vulnerable to contact infectious diseases, thus need vaccines most, but may not be in a position to afford these. The drug industry, the governments and medical professionals should device strategies to bring down the prices of the vaccines. Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur developed Smallpox and Rabies vaccines respectively to provide benefit to the mankind, same principle or motive needs to be carried forward.

Keywords

• Vaccines, prevention of diseases, cost of vaccines