30 Million Children Vaccinated by Global Agencies

Five-year commitments to immunize children in the world's poorest countries have exceeded US$1 billion, according to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI, Washington, DC, USA). Already, 30 million children have benefited from the nearly $250 million in new vaccines and infrastructure disbursed so far.

Including Angola, Chad, and Congo, which were recently approved for funding, 71 countries have received vaccines from The Vaccine Fund, the financing arm of GAVI. Many of these are showing impressive signs of success. Immunization rates in Mali and Uganda, for example, have reversed their falling coverage rate of the late 1990s and are now reaching even more children than they had anticipated in their original application. The agencies estimate that global immunization efforts will prevent as many as 300,000 deaths. Two out of every three nonimmunized children are in five countries: India, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

GAVI was created as a public/private partnership to reverse the decline in immunization coverage in developing countries during the 1990s and was launched with an initial grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Other participants include national governments, UNICEF, WHO, The World Bank, the vaccine industry, and public health organizations.

"As new vaccines become available and more children are born in developing countries, costs are soaring for The Vaccine Fund,” said Jacques-Francois Martin, president. "We urgently need to raise more money and bring new public and private donors to the table.”




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Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization