This poses an interesting question about markets and how they work to develop public goods like vaccines. For years, pharmaceuticals have had the capacity to develop vaccines that would have prevented millions of deaths in the developing world. So why hasn't this happened?
Pharmaceuticals had little incentive to develop these vaccines as they would be serving a low-income segment of the market that would not be able to afford high-priced preventive care.
This is one area in which the work of economists has been highly influential in policy circles!
Michael Kremer from Harvard University has advocated for years that we need to intervene in this market to align the incentives of pharmaceuticals (profit), with those of policy-makers and donors (promoting well-being in the developing world). Michael has suggested that donors pledge to guarantee the demand for vaccines aimed at "developing country diseases", to create incentives for the pharmaceuticals to develop them. You can check out his work here:
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