The government recently announced Pakistan’s first vaccine policy. Aimed at encouraging the local production of much-needed vaccines, which form the backbone of our public health system, the policy would now be presented to the Prime Minister for approval.
For a country that barely produces any vaccines of its own, the policy aims to not only usher the country into self-reliance and reduce the hefty import bill, but also to eventually position Pakistan as an exporter of vaccines in neighbouring markets.
An aim like that requires the state to not only foster a sustainable R&D ecosystem, but also institute WHO-compliant quality standards, induce the pharma industry through appropriate incentives to take up production, and then create a whole economic environment where at least the local needs are being met first. The government would also need to bring together the private sector and research institutes, at the same time facilitating the build-up of industrial capacity. The policy aims to address these factors in a cohesive manner.
While there might be more bottle-necks than the policy might envision, especially with the pharma industry’s already heavy reliance on imports of raw materials, the policy might yet be the thing that ushers in a new phase in the local pharma industry’s history. Consistency of policy, with appropriate focus on long term capacity development, would be needed to make this policy a success.
The Current Landscape
The world is a place where sickness and disease thrives; it came with the package. Or whatever Hamlet said.
Vaccines are – beside access to clean water – perhaps the greatest public health advance humanity has seen in our effort to fight against disease. While some are given at specific times during childhood to prevent life-changing (sometimes changing life to death) diseases like polio and diphtheria, others such as the vaccines for rabies and snake poison are more ad-hoc and administered when needed.
Pakistan’s history with vaccines has been complicated, to say the least. With local suspicions towards these imports from the western world, which were thought to lead to various diseases of their own, not the least of which was impotence, the real history of violence towards vaccine workers only underscores the deep sensitivity of this issue. That a vaccine drive was also allegedly involved as an intelligence front in the lead-up of the killing of Osama bin Laden, did little to allay these misgivings.
Whatever the attitude towards these medicines, vaccinations remain a key part of Pakistan’s public health infrastructure. The Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI), which was launched in 1978, is the major program bringing vaccines to the population, primarily focused on immunizing children against various diseases like childhood tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus and measles.
The problem – which the proposed policy is responding to – is that we don’t make these vaccines. There is a small capacity for “fill-and-finish” operations working with foreign partners – such as for COVID – but for the large part, we import these vaccines. Now, not only are we dependent on imports for our public health needs, we are also dependent to finance these imports. In this latter case, we rely on GAVI, UNICEF, and WHO to subsidize our vaccine import bill, through donations and discounts. Currently, after this assistance, the total racks up to around PKR 26 billion, which without their assistance would be almost PKR 100 billion.
The issue is that GAVI, which is the main organization driving vaccination efforts, is ending its support in 2031, raising concerns on how Pakistan would finance the difference. At the same time, such total reliance on external sources for critical raw materials makes the supply chain vulnerable, and exposes the product to direct cost fluctuations.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the current situation is not sustainable.
Enter the policy
The new vaccines policy was responding to these looming constraints, but was also driven by a positive vision to reduce Pakistan’s trade deficit, improve local manufacturing capacities, and strengthen public health capabilities.
One of the policy’s key recommendations is the creation of a National Vaccine Alliance, an association of various stakeholders including the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP), representatives from the pharma industry, public sector manufacturers, academic partners, federal authorities, and development partners.
The policy envisions a partnership between the public and the private sector, where the former would drive research, provide regulatory oversight, and facilitate technology transfer to private firms, while the latter leads large-scale manufacturing, and would be responsible for scaling up production, and commercialization.
This roadmap would involve first improving and expanding local capabilities for fill-and-finish operations. The main ingredients for vaccines would be being imported at this stage. Concurrently, facilitated by government oversight and technological transfers, latest technologies would be introduced in partnership with WHO or other joint ventures. This is expected to ultimately lead to the institution of the complete production process. Since exporting vaccines requires a prequalification stamp from the WHO, and the process can take more than 5 years, the focus would be to first incentivize manufacturing to meet local demands, with exports coming in – or, rather, going out – later.
Beside facilitating public-private partnerships, the policy also aims to institute clear regulatory mechanisms, which would involve the streamlining of regulatory approval pathways, aligning of manufacturing standards with WHO requirements, and strengthening the capacity of the National Regulatory Authority.
One key feature of this policy is its focus on advocating for innovative mechanisms to finance this aimed-for vaccination self-sufficiency and export-capability. In fact, one of the immediate action items proposed by the policy is the establishment of a National Vaccine Fund, as an investment platform to provide “patient, risk-sharing capital” through various investments, facilitating the scale-up of local vaccine production, clinical development, regulatory readiness and the advancement of good manufacturing process.
At the same time, the government would offer financial cushion to local manufacturers in the form of long-term, buy-back contracts, which would make the government share in the risk and incentivise the local pharma players to involve themselves in what promises to be a national project.
Will It Work?
The fortunes of the pharma industry have seen a boom in the past 2 years. The main reason is that in February 2024, the government finally allowed manufacturers of non-essential drugs to adjust prices without DRAP’s cumbersome approval process. This move saw profits shoot up, with the industry increasing its exports by 34% in the year 2025. Bulk of the local demand (70% by one estimate) is also being met by these pharmaceutical players.
Since this policy has allowed them more financial room, they have been able to expand their offerings and put some money towards product innovation. The fact remains, however, that the local pharma industry is still heavily reliant on imports for Advanced Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs), with estimates that this reliance accounts for over 90% of the total APIs in the local market. Local capabilities haven’t really been a point of massive investment.
One question that might be asked is whether an industry, which is so heavily reliant on imports itself, would be well-placed to admit this newer burden of producing vaccines on top. It is not to say that they are thoroughly unprepared for vaccine production, but to point out the fact that they are working under constraints for the current products. Though these current capabilities might be transferable to the initial stages of the vaccine manufacturing roadmap envisioned by the policy, the more ‘assembly’ side, it remains to be seen when and how exactly will the real leap forward come.
At the same time, though there have been smaller R&D advancements – researchers at the Dow University of Health & Sciences were able to create a local variant of the rabies vaccine, for example – the current R&D capabilities are nowhere near to sustain what the government is envisioning. In September 2025, for instance, the government set an export target of USD 30 billion in the next five years, a mere USD 29.5 billion more than the 2025 figure (USD 457 million). Just to make it clear, we haven’t yet seen an investment in capabilities that corresponds to this giant step.
While it is likely that this aim might not be achieved, the push might still bring in something positive. There is no denying the need of developing local capabilities to not only reduce reliance on imports, but also to become an exporter of such products. And the government in its policy appears to be willing to take a well-rounded approach in fostering partnerships between different sectors, and also to identify practical ways to facilitate its aims. This is good to see.
But, it must be stressed, this would require a sustained and patient effort, prioritizing long-term development of capabilities in both research and production side. Since an earlier part of the roadmap is the meeting of local demand, this long-term goal would necessarily have to be balanced against sharper short-term needs. In an atmosphere of political volatility, which Pakistan routinely gets caught up in, consistency of policy would be needed to solidify the gains in scale, as well.
Whether we achieve the status of a key exporter of vaccines to the world in 10 years or 15 or more, there is room to be cautiously optimistic that the government’s push could help revitalize the local manufacturing industry, and open up new venues of partnership with leading global players, especially in the fields of biotechnology, and help build capabilities against new health crises.
