Billion dollar commitment to immunise world's poorest children

More than US$1bn has been pledged over a five-year period to immunise children in the world's poorest countries, according to the the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) and its financing arm The Vaccine Fund.

Angola, Chad and Congo have been approved for funding by GAVI's Board, bringing to 71 the total number of countries receiving support for health infrastructure, vaccines and supplies from The Vaccine Fund.

GAVI executive secretary Dr Tore Godal said that more than 30m children have benefited already from the nearly $250m in new vaccines and funding for infrastructure disbursed so far from GAVI and The Vaccine Fund. Approximately 30m more of the world's children are now protected against hepatitis B, 4.3m against Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) and 1.6m against yellow fever. Furthermore, GAVI estimates that countries have been able to provide basic vaccination to 8.3m children who would otherwise have not been reached with any vaccines at all. The organisation estimates that as many as 300,000 deaths will be prevented because of the resources provided so far.

However, with its annual funding to countries on the rise, The Vaccine Fund will need substantial new funding by the end of 2004 to continue supporting GAVI activities. '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 of The Vaccine Fund. 'We urgently need to raise more money and bring new public and private donors to the table.'

GAVI was created as a public-private partnership to reverse the decline in immunisation coverage that many developing countries experienced during the 1990s. Partners include national governments, UNICEF, WHO, The World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, vaccine industry, public health institutions and nongovernmental organisations.

It is estimated that every year 33m infants still miss out on immunisation, and at least 1.5m of them will die of a vaccine-preventable cause before the age of five. Two out of every three unimmunised children can be found in five countries: India, Nigeria, China, Pakistan and Indonesia.