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PRESS
RELEASE
GAVI and
Vaccine Fund approve awards to 11 more countries; 5-year commitments now
exceed $ 600 million
Carol
Bellamy of UNICEF to become GAVI Board Chair, United Kingdom, UN
Foundation and Pasteur Institute Join GAVI Board
LONDON, 25 June – The Global Alliance for
Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) and the Vaccine Fund have approved a
fourth round of funding awards, bringing the vaccine effort’s total
commitments over the next five years to more than $600 million for
immunization programs in 36 of the
poorest countries in the developing world. The GAVI board also
welcomed UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy as its new chair, and
the United Kingdom, the United Nations Foundation and the Pasteur
Institute as new board members. The decisions came out at the fifth GAVI
board meeting held here last week.
“We’re up and running”, said Jacques-Francois Martin, a former
pharmaceutical company executive who is now president of the Vaccine
Fund. “Just one year after we issued the
first call for proposals we’re delivering vaccines and saving lives.”
The Vaccine Fund is a financially independent mechanism which makes its
funding decisions based on the recommendations of the GAVI Board.
Of the 25 countries that were approved in the first three rounds, 11
countries have already received their first instalment of financial
support from the Vaccine Fund to strengthen their health
infrastructures, and 5 have received shipments of vaccines. Working with
newly developed, long-term purchasing agreements with manufacturers,
GAVI and the Vaccine Fund have already committed to purchase more than
300 million doses of vaccines over the next three years; these new
grants will increase that commitment as well.
“The power of GAVI is in the collaboration between partners”, said Ms
Bellamy, who will take over as chair of the GAVI board on 1 July,
following the two-year term of Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland,
Director-General of WHO. “When you have UN
agencies, industrialized country donors, vaccine manufacturers, and
developing country health officials all sitting around the same table,
public health programs can be much more effective.”
In addition to welcoming Ms Bellamy as chair, the GAVI Board welcomed
the government of the United Kingdom, represented by UK Secretary of
State Clare Short; the United Nations Foundation, represented by
President Tim Wirth; and the Pasteur Institute, represented General
Director Philippe Kourilsky. They will replace representatives from the
government of Canada, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the US National
Institutes of Health, respectively, whose two-year terms will end 30
June.
As in past rounds, an independent review committee of developing
country health experts assessed the proposals submitted to GAVI by
countries, presenting their recommendations to the GAVI Board. In this
round, the proposals from Afghanistan, Albania, Bangladesh, Eritrea,
Nigeria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Zambia and
Zimbabwe have been approved for support; twenty-five other countries in
Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas have already been approved in past
rounds. Initial grants of vaccines and funding are made based on a
careful review of country applications. Subsequent grants will be made
depending on the country’s ability to implement the plan and meet its
goals.
The Vaccine Fund award process, designed and operated by the partners
of GAVI, efficiently channels resources to developing country health
systems so that approximately 98% of current Vaccine Fund resources go
directly to countries. Based on the strength of countries’ programs and
their needs, support from the Vaccine Fund can take the form of
financial assistance to strengthen health infrastructure, or provision
of newer, under-used vaccines such as hepatitis B and Haemophilus
influenzae type b (Hib).
At present, vaccines save more than three million lives per year.
However, GAVI estimates that another three million die because they lack
access to immunization. Measles – a disease virtually unseen in rich
countries today – kills nearly one million children every year. Liver
disease caused by hepatitis B claims another 900,000 lives annually.
The Vaccine Fund was launched by GAVI partners with a five-year, $750
million contribution from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation at the
World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2000. Since its launch, the
Vaccine Fund has secured additional funding from the governments of
Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States, The Netherlands and
Denmark, bringing its total funding to over $1 billion.
For more
information, please contact:
Lisa Jacobs
GAVI Secretariat
c/o UNICEF
Palais des Nations,
1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland
Tel: 41.22.909.50.19
Fax: 41.22.909.59.31
Email:
Gavi@unicef.org
More about GAVI
The Vaccine Fund
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