Giving Compass' Take:

• Dayna Kerecman Myers explains how vaccines are designed for wealthy people rather than those who need them most, minimizing their impact. 

• How can funders work to ensure that vaccines are developed based on need, not ability to pay? 

• Learn how to find and fund scientific research. 

Pneumococcus comes in multiple varieties. When the first versions of PCV were developed, they were not developed for the kids who needed them the most. They were developed for the kids who could pay for them. They were developed to address the strains of pneumococcus common in the United States, Canada, and the developed world.

I wanted people to take away both the nature and scope of the problem, the failure of market capitalism to address this, and the large-scale efforts underway to try to do something about it. And to make it real.

I understand you cannot blow the profit motive out of the manufacture of medication or vaccines, but this struck me as a most obscene condensation of how this plays out. The ameliorating fact, of course, is that vaccines appropriate to kids of the developing world did begin to be made, not too long afterward, largely because of the intervention and enthusiastic distress of people.

Read the full article on vaccines for those who need them most by Dayna Kerecman Myers at Global Health NOW.