Domestic Vaccine Production Too Expensive
Image: YLE
The slow arrival of swine flu vaccines has sparked debate on the necessity of domestic vaccine production. However experts say vaccine R&D is not financially viable for small nations such as Finland.
Many politicians have recently floated the notion that Finland could launch domestic or joint Nordic production of the swine flu vaccine. Critics say vaccines against the H1N1 virus are arriving in Finland too slowly to deal with the current epidemic.
Finland’s National Public Health Institute (KTL) stopped producing its own vaccines in 2003. Health officials opted to save money by ordering vaccines from large foreign manufacturers. The former director of the KTL’s vaccine department says developing a new vaccine could cost between 500 million and a billion euros.
Domestic pharmaceutical companies are also sceptical about the benefits of domestic vaccine production.
“Large-scale Finnish vaccine production has been the responsibility of the state. Vaccine research, development and production are expensive endeavours,” says Suvi-Anne Siimes, the General Manager of Pharma Industry Finland, an interest group for innovative pharmaceutical companies.
Finland has ordered swine flu vaccines for Finland’s population of 5.3 million.
YLE