Dalla Lana School of Public Health

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Title: Toward vaccine equity: Commercial forces, technological platforms and the race to develop the Bundibugyo Ebola vaccine

Speaker: Professor Matthew Herder

Abstract: The race is on to develop a vaccine to help quell the outbreak of Ebola virus disease currently ripping its way through the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. With millions in funding from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the United States government, and other sources, four vaccine candidates are in the lead, with an mRNA vaccine among the frontrunners. However, the race to develop a Bundibugyo vaccine is less about competing technological platforms, and more about the commercial forces that control them all. In this seminar, Professor Matthew Herder will discuss how vaccine research and development, despite government and philanthropic investments, often fails to address public health need and inequities. Rather, due to opaque arrangements and lack of public accountability, commercial interests frequently infiltrate R&D process and extract a profit from an intervention even when it has little lucrative potential, as in the case of an Ebola outbreak. Instead, mechanisms such as technology transfer and provision of resources to local organizations must be developed to make vaccines and other essential medicines in places where infectious diseases like Ebola are endemic beyond the current outbreak.