GAVI and The Vaccine Fund - Overview

The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization is an historic alliance between the private and public sector committed to one goal: saving children’s lives and people’s health through the widespread use of vaccines.

GAVI emerged in 1999 in response to stagnating immunization rates and widening global disparities in access to vaccines. International organizations, governments, the vaccine industry, research institutions, and major philanthropists collectively serve the shared GAVI objectives: expanding the reach of immunization services, introducing priority new vaccines, and establishing tools and systems to promote sustainable financing in developing countries.

The Vaccine Fund has been created to support the GAVI objectives. It provides financing to the world’s poorest countries to strengthen health infrastructures and introduce new and under-used vaccines. Grants are made based on a rigorous application process in which country proposals are reviewed by a panel of experts, most of whom are themselves national health ministry staff.

GAVI’s unique structure allows the alliance to capitalize on existing systems and diverse technical and on-the-ground expertise.

• The high-level GAVI Board maintains a visionary outlook in setting policies.
• The Working Group ensures that Board decisions are acted upon in the partner organizations, and a small secretariat coordinates between partners and manages the review of country proposals to The Vaccine Fund.
• Four task forces (advocacy, financing, implementation, and research and development) draw upon a wider network of expertise to guide action.
• Regional working groups provide technical support to countries.
• And, crucially, national inter-agency coordinating committees (ICCs) provide a forum for joint strategy development and monitoring at the country level.

Over the past two years, the partners in the Alliance have:

• Committed more than US$ 900 million from The Vaccine Fund to 60 developing country government health programs, over five years.
• Delivered more than 30 million vaccine doses to 27 countries, and transferred funds to national immunization programs in 34 countries.
• Created a viable market in poor countries for new combination vaccines, a demand that vaccine manufacturers are gearing up to satisfy.
• Developed a new protocol to assess the quality of immunization coverage data, the immunization Data Quality Audit, or DQA.
• Agreed to prioritize three new vaccines in late stages of development, against viral diarrhoea, pneumonia, and meningitis diseases.
• Made The Vaccine Fund truly international: Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States, The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Canada and private donors have all joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support The Vaccine Fund, pushing its total commitments to $1.2 billion.

As the partnership evolves, it will continue to seek catalytic and sustainable approaches to funding. In the future, GAVI and The Vaccine Fund may channel resources toward increased support to health infrastructure, other under-used vaccines, or new approaches to reaching every child with essential health care.