Report Highlights:
On 16 December 2025, the World Health Organization released Global market landscape of vaccine manufacturing and procurement, analyzing 2023 data from 204 countries (over 20,000 data points) and 98 manufacturers (116 including subsidiaries) to assess the vaccine production-procurement ecosystem and equity.
The report portrays a highly interdependent global supply system in which countries across all regions rely on cross-regional supply chains and procure vaccines with production stages spanning multiple regions; it then outlines how regional “self-reliance” varies, how supplier concentration and income-linked purchasing can heighten access risks when supply tightens, and how manufacturing scale and technology gaps shape both routine markets and emergency response.
In 2023, 7B vaccine doses worth US$78B were procured globally. Regional self-reliance varied sharply: South-East Asia sourced 89% of vaccines from within the region and the Western Pacific 67%, patterns largely driven by India (99% self-sufficiency) and China (90% self-sufficiency). Excluding India and China, self-reliance falls to 55% in South-East Asia and 34% in the Western Pacific, underscoring that many other countries in these regions use more mixed procurement strategies. Supplier diversity also differs substantially: South-East Asia procures from 26 manufacturers, while the Western Pacific procures from 66, suggesting different resilience profiles even when headline self-reliance is high. By contrast, the African Region sourced <5% of vaccines from region-headquartered firms; in the 2023 breakdown summarized in the Chinese brief, >50% of African dose volume was procured from India-headquartered suppliers, while roughly 50% of total procurement value flowed to United States-headquartered suppliers—highlighting dependence that can become consequential when supply tightens.
The report links market structure to access risk through HPV and PCV exemplars. HPV supply, long dominated by two manufacturers headquartered in the Americas and Europe, remains highly concentrated even as new products from China and India enter the market. In 2023, the largest HPV supplier accounted for 70% of procured drug substance and the second largest 17%. Concentration is especially visible in Africa: among 24 African countries purchasing HPV vaccine in 2023, 19 relied on a single supplier, increasing vulnerability to disruptions and contributing to delays that have been particularly consequential for Gavi-supported introductions and campaigns. PCV appears more diversified, with 11 suppliers globally in 2023, yet production is still technically constrained: drug-substance manufacturing is limited to 7 suppliers and remains concentrated, with the top two suppliers holding 75% of global drug-substance market share. UNICEF has noted that since 2022, following the end of the PCV AMC subsidy, supply has been sufficient and prices stable with a more diversified supplier base, while potential supply risks still warrant attention.
Manufacturer scale and technology capacity are highly uneven: a few companies sell over 400 million doses and exceed US$5 billion in annual value, while 75–85% are small or medium-sized; >30% sell fewer than 5 million doses and >20% capture under US$5 million. Traditional platforms dominate, and innovative platforms such as mRNA are concentrated mainly in the United States and Europe. WHO therefore argues that regional manufacturing should be linked to regional R&D ecosystems, with end-to-end investment across the value chain to improve equity and supply security, including for commercially less attractive markets.
Original report: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240118249
Content Editor: Xinyue Zhou
Page Editor: Ruitong Li
