The advance-market commitment concept aims to bring new vaccines

A new $1.5 billion program is being launched to encourage pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines for diseases that are common in poor countries.

The donors plan to announce the initiative on Friday during a meeting of top finance officials from the Group of Eight. Italy, the U.K., Canada, Russia, Norway and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will be footing the bill to help design new vaccines. The first target will be pneumococcal disease. The disease kills 1.6 million people a year world-wide. Most of those who perish are young children in the developing world. Orin Levine, associate professor of international health at Johns Hopkins University is a long time backer of the advance-market commitment concept. He believes that the funding could prevent up to eight million child deaths by 2030. Four years ago Italy and Britain begun to champion the advance-market commitment concept. At that time the U.S. was enthusiastic but didn't bring money to the table. While malaria, HIV-AIDS, tuberculosis or other infectious illnesses are all diseases that kill new vaccines for them are possible to be on the market within a year. That is the reasoning behind going after pneumococcal disease. Pneumococcus is a bacteria that can cause pneumonia, septicemia and meningitis. According to the World Health Organization it kills as many as one million children under the age of five annually.

Viigo reports:

"Usually, pharmaceutical companies have very little interest in investing in this type of research, since developing countries cannot afford these vaccines when they are developed," the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance said in a written description of the program.

GlaxoSmithKline PLC and Wyeth have shown interest in the advance-market commitment. Wyeth currently has a vaccine for preumococcus that is used in the United States and is looking at developing a newer vaccine.