MSF's Suerie Moon spoke in front of a US Senate Committee on promoting new treatments & cures for neglected diseases read more
NEW: The 13th Edition of Untangling the Web of Antiretroviral Price Reductions is now available download it here
VIDEO: MSF's community approach to treating malnutrition in Niger watch it here
WHO's work on the financing of medical research and development is given a fresh start read more
MSF Letter to GFATM on concerns over scale-up of AIDS treatment in light of Board of Directors Meeting read more
New European Parliament Working Group on Innovation & Access launches with support of Access Campaign read more
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In depth
The Advance Market Commitment (AMC) is an innovative financing model that subsidises pharmaceutical companies for the development and production of new vaccines. The subsidy is meant to reduce the risk for pharmaceutical companies of investing in products for poor country markets. The subsidy is only paid once a vaccine meeting certain specifications is made available at a given price set by the donors.
RECENT NEWS
In light of the GSK and Pfizer announced that they signed supply agreements for pneumococcal vaccines within GAVI’s advance market commitment (AMC) on 23 March 1010, MSF raises a number of concerns in fulfilling the needs of children in developing countries.
To read MSF's full comments on the announcement, click here.
The signature of the agreements by the governments of Italy, the UK, Norway, Canada and Russia - together with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - caps two years of negotiations between these donors and the GAVI Alliance, which is leading the pneumococcal vaccine AMC.
As a part of our work on the different financial mechanisms to boost access to medicines and medical innovation, the MSF Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines has been watching the project as it evolved.
Below are some of our publications on the pneumo-AMC:
AMC - A New Deal To Boost Production Of Life-Saving Vaccines: What The Doctor Ordered? (12 June 2009)
'Advance Market Commitments: Are They Worth the Hype?'
The Campaign's health economist, Laurent Gadot, questions whether AMCs are the right mechanism to ensure that newly developed health tools can be made affordable to those that need them. (May 2008)
'Questioning the US$1.5 billion deal'
The Campaign's director, Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer, highlights the risk that the pharmaceutical industry pockets all the AMC money in an article published in Development Today. (25 April 2008)
Read accompanying articles from Development Today
Open letter to the AMC donors outlining MSF concerns over the AMC design (20 May 2007)
How AMCs work and what are their flaws
An MSF note raises doubts about the ability of AMCs to stimulate research and development into neglected diseases. (2007)
(Note that the final design of the pneumo-AMC was made public on 10 July 2008. The comments on articles included in this box thus reflect MSF concerns over earlier AMC designs and are provided here for archiving purposes only.)
Last updated: 23 March 2010
Cough Up for TB! The Underfunding of TB Research Across Europe (October 2009) 
Presenation: Missing ARVs for HIV/AIDS treatment in 2009 - Unitaid Patent Pool Briefing
HIV/AIDS treatment in developing countries: the battle for long-term survival has just begun
