Thanks to the Global Alliance for
Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), the
Vaccine Fund and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the global health community has made enormous progress in providing already existing
vaccines to developing countries. However, there still exists a gap to develop
vaccines for which there is no market in the Western world, owing to low economic incentives for the private sector to justify the investments necessary for
vaccine development. In many cases, industry has the technologies, but lacks the impetus to direct resources to develop these
vaccine products. The present emergency with the
Ebola vaccine provides us an excellent example where a
vaccine was feasible several years ago, but the global health community waited for a humanitarian disaster to direct efforts and resources to develop this
vaccine. In the beginning of 2015, the first large-scale trials of two experimental
vaccines against
Ebola virus disease have begun in West Africa. During the past few years, several institutions have dedicated efforts to the development of
vaccines against diseases present only in low-income countries. These include the International
Vaccine Institute, the Novartis
Vaccines Institute for Global Health, the Hilleman Institute, the
Sabin Vaccine Institute and the
Infectious Disease Research Institute. Nevertheless, solving this problem requires a more significant global effort than that currently invested. These efforts include a clear policy, global coordination of funds dedicated to the development of
neglected disease and an agreement on regulatory strategies and incentives for the private sector.