Each year, pneumococcal disease takes the lives of half million children under five years of age, making it the leading vaccine-preventable cause of death among young children.

The most effective way to prevent these deaths is to ensure access to effective, safe and affordable vaccines.

The pneumococcal Advance Market Commitment (AMC) is designed to protect children against pneumococcal disease.

Through donor commitments, this innovative funding mechanism incentivises vaccine makers to produce suitable and affordable vaccines for the world's poorest countries. These countries are then able to plan for immunisation programmes knowing that vaccines will be available rapidly, in the quantities they need and at affordable prices.

It is estimated that the pilot can prevent more than 700,000 childhood deaths by end of 2020.

OBJECTIVES

The overarching goal of the pilot AMC is to reduce morbidity and mortality from pneumococcal diseases. The pneumococcal AMC is designed to:

• accelerate the development of vaccines that meet developing country needs;
• bring forward the availability of effective pneumococcal vaccines - through scaling up of production capacity to meet developing country vaccine demand;
• accelerate vaccine uptake - through predictable vaccine pricing for countries and manufacturers;
• test the AMC concept for potential future applications.

WHY DOES THE AMC TARGET PNEUMOCOCCAL DISEASE?

The decision about which disease to target was made by an independent expert committee. The committee included members from both developing and industrial countries with expertise in public health, epidemiology, industry economics, vaccine development and law.

WHICH PNEUMOCOCCAL VACCINE?

Minimum product specification for the pneumococcal vaccine were developed by WHO. These are called the target product profile (TPP) and relate to the public health impact and suitability of the product, covering measures of vaccine efficacy, safety, dose-scheduling, presentation and packaging, and represent the minimally acceptable standard a vaccine needs to meet in order to be eligible for AMC support.

Documents

• Independent Expert Committee Membership

  Download

• Independent Expert Committee Recommendation for AMC Pilot

  Download

• Target Product Profile (TPP) for the pneumococcal AMC: master table

  Download

• Target Product Profile (TPP) for the Pneumococcal AMC: supplementary information

  Download

• Target Product Profile (TPP) for pneumococcal AMC: codebook

  Download