F&S asserts that the Chinese vaccine market is already a major force in the country’s pharma sector and will continue to be in the coming years.
Four reasons are cited to support this view, the first of which covers the stable demand for vaccines in the country. F&S predicts that this will support the sectors growth, with demand for children’s vaccines playing an important role.
There were more than 16m newborns in China last year with a birth rate of 12.4 percent and although this is predicted to drop the country’s large population should ensure a sizeable market for children’s vaccines.
In addition awareness of the importance of vaccinations is rising in China, with the recent outbreak of H1N1 cited by F&S as a factor that reinforced this message.
This has been aided by increased advertising by pharma companies, which have begun promoting vaccines on television and in the form of public service advertisements.
Government plays its part
F&S also believes the vaccines market has received a boost from the Chinese government, which intends to increase investment from 218m RMB (€23m) to 2.8bn RMD.
This increase in funding “provides the whole industry with a strong confidence and good environment for further development”, according to F&S.
In addition F&S predicts the market for self-paid vaccines will increase. Currently the rate of self-paid EPI (Expanded Programme on Immunization) vaccines is 10 - 20 per cent but increased awareness should increase usage in the coming years.
China tackles H1N1
China-based Hualan Biological Engineering has claimed it has produced 90,000 doses of a H1N1 vaccine, which will now undergo testing and should be available in September.
Hualan believes that it will be able to produce 600,000 doses a day once the vaccine is approved by the Chinese State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), which has received a clinical test plan from the company.