UNICEF and Gavi have agreed to pay €5.50 a dose for the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine from early 2027, about 40% less than today, saving some US$50 million over three years. The cut depends on GSK’s technology transfer to Bharat Biotech in Hyderabad, and on WHO approving the company’s new manufacturing facility.
The world’s first malaria vaccine is about to become substantially cheaper, and the reason lies in Genome Valley. On 22 October, UNICEF and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, announced that they had secured a price of €5.50 a dose for RTS,S/AS01, sold by GSK as Mosquirix, about 40% below the price paid today. The lower price is expected from early 2027.
According to Gavi, the saving will be about US$50 million between 2027 and 2029, enough to protect up to one million more children with the full four-dose course, or to help countries buy other vaccines.
Why the price can fall
The cut is tied to a change in who makes the vaccine. Gavi says RTS,S/AS01 is being transferred from GSK to Bharat Biotech, the Hyderabad-headquartered vaccine maker, which will supply it in future. Reuters reports that Bharat Biotech will fully take over production by 2028, with GSK continuing to supply the vaccine’s adjuvant, the immune-boosting component, after the handover. GSK and Bharat Biotech had said last year that they aimed to bring the price below $5 a dose by 2028.
The deal is conditional. UNICEF will begin buying doses from the new source only after regulatory and manufacturing milestones are met, including WHO prequalification of Bharat Biotech’s new manufacturing facility. Prequalification is WHO’s assessment that a vaccine and its production site meet international standards of quality, safety and efficacy; UN agencies generally buy only prequalified products. The release does not say where the facility is or when inspection is expected.
“This agreement is an important step towards protecting more children from malaria,” said Leila Pakkala, director of UNICEF’s Supply Division. Gavi’s chief vaccine programmes and markets officer, An Vermeersch, described it as an example of combining financing, technical expertise and partnerships “to shape healthier vaccine markets”. The International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm), which raises money for Gavi on capital markets, also backed the arrangement.
Where the vaccine is used
RTS,S/AS01 was the world’s first malaria vaccine to be prequalified by WHO. According to Gavi, it is now part of routine childhood immunisation in 25 African countries that together bear more than 70% of the global malaria burden, and UNICEF has procured and delivered more than 74 million doses so far.
Malaria remains one of the largest killers of young children. WHO estimates, published annually, put malaria deaths at about 600,000 a year, the large majority among African children under five. The vaccine is given as a four-dose course starting at around five months of age. It does not prevent every infection; its value lies in reducing clinical malaria and severe disease when used alongside bed nets, indoor spraying and prompt treatment.
A second vaccine, R21/Matrix-M, co-developed by the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India, was prequalified later. Reuters notes that Gavi and UNICEF last year secured a 25% price reduction for a Serum Institute malaria vaccine. Once the transfer is complete, both of the world’s prequalified malaria vaccines will be manufactured by Indian companies.
Why price matters to countries
Gavi-supported countries co-finance part of the cost of each vaccine they introduce, and that share rises as their economies grow. A lower unit price therefore eases pressure on national health budgets as well as on Gavi’s own funds. For a four-dose vaccine given to every child in a birth cohort, a saving of a few euros a dose quickly adds up, and it can decide whether a ministry extends the vaccine from high-transmission districts to the whole country.
The Hyderabad connection
Bharat Biotech is best known in India for Covaxin and for its rotavirus and typhoid conjugate vaccines. The RTS,S transfer, first agreed by GSK, PATH and Bharat Biotech in 2021, places a Telangana manufacturer at the centre of Africa’s malaria programme.
For Hyderabad’s life-sciences cluster, the significance is twofold. It confirms the city’s role as a supplier of vaccines for global public-health programmes, a market built on low cost, high volume and WHO-standard quality. It also means that any delay in prequalification, or any manufacturing difficulty, will be felt by children in Africa. The price cut is a promise that depends on execution in Telangana.
What it means for India
India itself does not use a malaria vaccine in its national programme. Its strategy rests on surveillance, vector control and treatment, and the country has recorded large falls in cases over the past decade, with a stated goal of eliminating malaria by 2030. Plasmodium vivax, which RTS,S does not target, accounts for a large share of Indian cases; the vaccine was designed against Plasmodium falciparum, the dominant parasite in Africa.
The deal is therefore mainly an export and public-health diplomacy story for India, rather than a change to domestic malaria control. It also illustrates a model India has promoted for years: technology transfer to developing-country manufacturers as a route to affordable global supply.
The caveats
Three uncertainties remain:
- Timing. The lower price applies only once WHO prequalifies the new facility; no date has been given.
- Supply. Demand for malaria vaccines in Africa has exceeded supply since roll-out began, and the transition between manufacturers will need to avoid gaps.
- Funding. The saving helps only if Gavi’s malaria programme continues to be funded. Donor budgets for global health are under pressure, which makes a cheaper vaccine more, not less, important.
What happens next
Bharat Biotech’s facility must pass WHO’s inspection and dossier review before UNICEF can buy from it. If that happens on schedule, the price falls in early 2027 and production shifts entirely to Hyderabad by 2028. Neither Bharat Biotech nor GSK had issued a statement on the price agreement in the material NSH reviewed.
