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GAVI Alliance programme raises US$ 38 million for child immunisation
The following is a guest post from David Ferreira Managing Director, Innovative Finance, of the GAVI Alliance from the World Economic Forum meeting held in Davos last week.
I have long believed that a group of committed people can accomplish almost anything.
I saw it in my native South Africa. I have seen it in my work for the GAVI Alliance, which in just over a decade has helped immunise 326 million children and save more than 5.5 million lives. And, in Davos, Switzerland, I was privileged to have breakfast with a group of very committed people.
In the past year, a handful of visionary government and business leaders have stepped forward to create an unusual partnership that could save millions of lives over the next few years. That partnership is the GAVI Matching Fund.
Under the GAVI Matching Fund, the British government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have pledged about US$ 130 million combined (GBP 50 million and US$ 50 million, respectively) to match contributions to GAVI from corporations, foundations and other organizations, as well as from their customers, employees and business partners.
The goal – including the match – is to raise US$ 260 million for immunisation by the end of 2015, bringing us much closer to ensuring that GAVI can help immunise 225 million children and save 3.9 million lives over that period.
This programme has shone a light on an increasing number of private sector champions for global health. They range from financial services firms such as JP Morgan and the Spanish bank “la Caixa” (through its foundation), to prominent global enterprises such as Anglo American and nimble, creative foundations such as Comic Relief, Absolute Return for Kids (ARK) and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF).
Collectively, these champions are contributing their voices, skills and financial resources to the fight for child immunisation in the world’s poorest countries. This is a model that works. The GAVI Matching Fund was launched in June 2011 and in just a few months has already raised around US$ 40 million for immunisation.
This new model was an important theme that at the breakfast I attended in Davos, where the World Economic Forum is holding its annual meeting. The gathering literally was a “breakfast of champions.” There, several GAVI Matching Fund partners and other global business leaders met with Andrew Mitchell, the British Secretary of State for International Development and Bill Gates.
They spoke convincingly of how a public-private partnership can succeed, whether through Comic Relief raising funds from the general public for global health, “la Caixa” organising business partners to help fund the roll-out of vaccines in Central America, or companies offering their technologies and core business skills to save lives.
For instance, the same know-how that gets soft drinks to remote areas of Africa could help the countries that GAVI supports deliver vaccines to those areas. Or cellphone technology could be used to efficiently monitor the use of vaccines.
Even a US$ 3 million donation – matched by the British Government or the Gates Foundation – would buy enough vaccine to immunise more than 500,000 children this year against pneumococcal disease, one of the main causes of death from pneumonia. Or nearly a million children against potentially fatal diarrhoea caused by rotavirus.
The GAVI Matching Fund is an example of what can be achieved when governments, corporations, foundations and the general public work together to solve difficult problems, such as the inequity in the availability of vaccines for children living in poor countries. It represents a rare chance to be part of something guaranteed to change the lives of millions of people for the better.
It represents a new era of champions for public health.
Fighting pneumonia in Bangladesh
To mark World Pneumonia Day today we are presenting the first of three special reports from Dhaka, where UK Parliamentarian Jim Dobbin MP highlights his experiences visiting Dhaka’s main healthcare centres.
I am currently in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with a senior delegation of UK parliamentarians looking at the work of the GAVI Alliance and the impact that vaccines are having in the developing world. The GAVI Alliance is one of the UK Government’s headline organistions and I have followed its progress for many years. I am especially interested in its work in rolling out life-saving vaccines in developing countries where 85% of the world’s unvaccinated children live. The results have been staggering to date: since its creation in 2000 it has immunised 288 million children and saved 5 million lives and is aiming to save more than 4 million more by 2015. Therefore when I was given the opportunity to see this work in action in a Dhaka children’s hospital and urban slum I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
Going into the visit I thought of a similar visit I undertook in Kenya, where I saw crowded wards of whole families huddled together in unsanitary conditions. Medical waste sat in heaps on the floor and sick children ran around the hospital. That was a very moving visit and highlighted to me just how big a gulf there is between the richest nations and poorest.
But, ever since I arrived in Dhaka you can tell that it is a bustling city on the rise. This same sense was evident in the Dhaka Shishu Hospital. I arrived and was met by Professor Samir Saha, the Head of the Microbiology at the hospital. He took us around the wards and the laboratories and explained the work they were undertaking. His team are a pioneering group helping to improve the diagnosis of infections and disease surveillance and to better document the impact of immunisation in Bangladesh. We also met the Government Expanded Programme for Immunisation Team and heard about the great strides they had been making over the past few years. You cannot hide the fact that childhood mortality still greatly affects the country; in fact 55,000 lives every year are claimed by pneumonia. In the hospital wards, we saw the young children fighting this terrible disease, which along with diarrhoea accounts for nearly 40% of all childhood mortality in the developing world. We also saw a the impact of malnutrition and poor healthcare education, which leads to children going undiagnosed and not receiving the vital treatment they need.
But overall it was actually a picture of great hope and improvement. I was delighted to see the progress that Bangladesh has been making in immunisation with the support of the GAVI Alliance. We witnessed a well run and effective immunisation session; heard from maternal health workers about their drive to educate mothers about the healthcare of their children. We visited the central vaccine store for Bangladesh and heard about their checks and balances that ensure that vaccines are stored and distributed correctly.
Bangladesh is just one of many countries benefitting in this way. Thanks to the funding from the UK and other donors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the excellent work of the GAVI Alliance is being replicated across the developing world. Access to life-saving vaccines has been delivered to countries 10-15 years sooner than would have otherwise been possible. Nicaragua became the first GAVI-eligible country to introduce the life-saving pneumococcal vaccine and it is now being used in 15 developing countries and has already reached more than three million children with another 10 million expected to receive the vaccine in 2012. In fact today, Malawi will become the 16th GAVI-supported country to introduce the vaccine.
Therefore the picture is increasingly encouraging in Bangladesh and across the globe, but there are still challenges. With an increasingly close relationship between the major donors and aid providers in the world we can continue to move forward and provide successful vaccinations to those that really need them.
Rwanda is Proud to Pioneer the Pneumococcal Vaccine
In this guest blog for World Pneumonia Day on the 12th of November Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, Minister of Health, writes on Rwanda’s partnership with the GAVI alliance to pioneer the Pneumococcal Vaccine.
In April 2009, Rwanda became the first low-income country to rollout the pneumococcal vaccine (PCV7) through a partnership with Wyeth. This was a great moment for us, for after having achieved dramatic reductions in malaria incidence, pneumococcal disease had stood as the new leading cause of death among Rwandan children. And it was the dedicated work of our partner, The GAVI Alliance for Vaccines, that ensured the pneumococcal vaccine would be both accessible and affordable for use in our country.
Pneumonia remains the single largest cause of death among children under five around the world. Every 20 seconds, a child dies of this preventable disease.
On November 12, 2011, Rwanda will join other countries in observing the third World Pneumonia Day, a day to celebrate the power of immunization to save lives when access is assured.
The PCV7 vaccine also prevents against pneuomoccal meningitis, a debilitating disease that leaves children who survive it with lifelong mental and physical disabilities.
Certainly immunization is not the only way to prevent pneumonia; breast-feeding, improved nutrition, and the reduction of indoor air pollution are also essential, and children must have access to effective antibiotics when they do fall sick. But immunization removes the burden of hospitalization and treatment on the health system and diminishes the time . This is a major economic advantage in countries like Rwanda, where the time lost by parents lose from work in caring for their children. For immunization to work, it needs to be integrated fully in health and community services. This is what we did in Rwanda.
Last year, the pneumococcal vaccine was scaled up in 16 countries. By 2015, GAVI expects that 58 countries will have introduced the latest generation pneumococcal vaccines nationwide, covering another 90 million children. With sustained commitment among all partners, including both GAVI countries and donor countries, we can achieve remarkable progress in the fight against preventable deaths among children.
The number of lives saved by GAVI is a major contribution towards the world’s pursuit of the fourth Millennium Development Goal, but we must sustain the momentum. In Rwanda today, more than 80% of children have access to the pneumococcal vaccine. The children whose lives are being saved through our partnership with GAVI will help to build a Rwanda where health for all is not simply a dream but one of the foundations of a strong, peaceful nation of tomorrow.
The forgotten children – Vaccinating refugee camps in the developing world
In my capacity as Co-Chair of the UK All Party parliamentary Group for Global Action against Childhood Pneumonia (APPG) I have worked for many years to encourage greater roll out of vaccines globally. This work has seen some great successes, such as the work of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), who have rolled out a number of important vaccines, including the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine. This has helped to save millions of lives and will save millions more in the future.
But through the work I have undertaken and meetings I have held, there have always seemed to be one significant population ignored – refugees. Due to the displacement suffered by refugees they fall between the vaccination programmes of different countries and the disorganised and overcrowded situation in most refugee camps makes coordinated vaccine rollout extremely difficult.
One camp in particular that I have recently been investigating is the infamous Dadaab refugee camp. Located in the North Eastern Province of Kenya, on the Kenya-Somalia border, the Dadaab camp is the world’s largest refugee complex. Established in 1991 as a temporary measure to help refugees fleeing conflict in Somalia, it is now home to around 430,000 inhabitants and is estimated to grow at a rate of 1,200 new arrivals every day. The Dadaab complex now ranks as the third largest population centre in Kenya after the capital Nairobi and the city of Mombasa.
It is estimated that around forty percent of children entering the Dadaab camp have received no vaccinations at all and, despite the efforts of a range of NGOs, malnutrition, diarrhoea and respiratory tract infections remain widespread in the complex. With such a high concentration of people, hygiene standards are extremely low and the complex suffers from a critical shortage of clean water.
But there is hope for the forgotten children of these camps as UNICEF are providing the latest vaccines against some of the biggest killers for children in the developing world. UNICEF are supplying vaccinations against pneumococcal disease, the leading killer of children under 5, and also against rotavirus, the second biggest killer of small children.
This is reassuring, but is by no means enough. We must develop a coordinated response to protect other refugee children in Africa, such as those in new camps for the 35,000 in Ethiopia fleeing the attacks on civilians in Sudan’s disputed Blue Nile state.
Many of the illnesses that spread through refugee camps are preventable through simple vaccines and with the continuing displacement of peoples globally it is time that a body was established with responsibility for rolling out vaccines to refugees. This is something the APPG will be looking into going forward – giving a voice to the unfortunate children who end up in these camps.
Lord Avebury is Co-Chair of the UK All Party Parliamentary Group for Global Action Against Childhood Pneumonia.
Protect children against severe diarrhoea: here is the long awaited vaccine!
Dr. Clarisse Loe Loumou of GAVI’s Civil Society Organization Constituency makes a major announcement that will affect the health of millions of children around the globe.
During my years of practice in the largest pediatric hospital of Cameroon in Yaoundé, I remember that the 300 beds were rarely empty. I was in charge of the gastroenterology and paediatric nutrition ward, where 28 beds were occupied more than 90 percent of the time by infants who were dehydrated and suffering from severe diarrhea.
Our problem was not the diarrhea itself — its treatment protocols are well known; oral re-hydration salts, adequate re-nutrition, zinc supplementation, intravenous (IV) fluids for the most severe cases — but in making real the possibility of preventing severe diarrhea. It was and still is common for children in Cameroon and other parts of Africa who are suffering from severe diarrhea to die due to limited access to oral re-hydration salts, IVs, clean drinking water, or even the inability to reach a hospital in time.
Rotavirus is the leading cause of severe diarrhea in children under five years of age worldwide, killing more than half a million children each year and hospitalizing millions more. Nearly 50 percent, or 230,000 of those rotavirus deaths, happen in Africa. Worldwide, more than one third of the 1.34 million diarrhea deaths in children under five years of age, and 40 percent of the 9 million diarrhea-related hospitalizations are due to rotavirus disease. In Africa, the percentage of rotavirus-related hospitalizations is even a bit higher at 41 percent. These facts may be little-known, yet diarrhea remains the primary cause of child mortality in Africa. In Cameroon, diarrhea is the third highest cause of death in children under five years old. Thirty percent of those diarrheal deaths are due to rotavirus.
We need to draw attention to the devastating role of rotavirus in causing death to millions of young children. My hopes of delivering a rotavirus vaccine across all of Africa must one day become a reality, not only to prevent hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, but to boost our fight against poverty.
And let’s not forget the economic costs of diarrhea; of hospitalization, of medications, of parents or caregivers who must stop work, and of young lives lost. This leads to a vicious circle, where diarrhea that is inadequately treated can cause malnutrition, which can decrease immunity and lead to further re-infection with diarrhea or other diseases. Vaccination offers the best hope for preventing severe rotavirus disease and the deadly dehydrating diarrhea that it causes.
I am proud that in July 2011, with the support of the GAVI Alliance, Cameroon introduced a vaccine against pneumococcal disease, the leading cause of pneumonia, and aims to introduce the rotavirus vaccine in 2013. None of this would be possible without political will, the active contribution of donors, and the efforts of the Government of Cameroon and its Immunization Programme, which have made the environment conducive to helping these life-saving vaccines reach the children who need them most.
I am delighted that our children are finally going to be protected against the main causes of diarrhea and pneumonia, the world’s two biggest killers of children under five and the leading killers here in Cameroon. There is no reason for such unjust deaths, and we now eagerly await the rotavirus vaccine to reach us in 2013.
Dr. Clarisse Loe Loumou, pediatrician and member of the Steering Committee of the GAVI Civil Society Organization Constituency.
Heartfelt thanks from GAVI’s CEO, Helen Evans
Just one week after the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations’ (GAVI) successful pledging conference, Helen Evans, interim CEO of GAVI, dropped by ONE’s Washington DC office this week to say thanks.
Check out her heartfelt message to all the ONE members around the world who campaigned on behalf of GAVI and child vaccines:
USAID Chief Raj Shah in London
Off the back of the success of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization conference on Monday –where donors committed $4.3 billion to save 4 million lives in 5 years – USAID Administrator Dr Raj Shah delivered a lecture at the London School of Economics. His theme was results-based development assistance and the direction in which he is taking the agency since his appointment in late 2009.
GAVI was of course high on the agenda – and ONE congratulated Dr Shah on the US pledge of $450million to GAVI over 3 years. A multi-year commitment is a rarity in US development assistance, and Congress will need to approve, however it shows huge intent on behalf of the US.
He emphasised that GAVI showed the power of results-driven, effective, smart aid which is proven to be a cost effective way of ending the deaths of children from preventable diseases, such as pneumonia and diarrhoea. He also expressed the critical nature of the GAVI Alliance itself in that it combines philanthropy, the public sector and the private sector.
More broadly, Dr Shah stressed the integral role of development in US foreign policy, despite the constrained economic environment in which they and many other Western countries were currently operating. Another potent message in Dr Shah’s speech was the willingness of USAID to reach out to all civil society groups no matter their location or size and the emphasis on the continuing role for developed countries.
Agriculture is the “development challenge of our lifetime” he told us. He highlighted the role new technologies and infrastructure could play in agriculture policy and how effective investment in infrastructure for agriculture was already reaping benefits for countries like Ghana and Tanzania. Political will and breakthrough inventions in medicines and healthcare would be significant in future global development strategy he concluded.
You’re amazing. Thank you.
For months now, we’ve been asking our ONE members to give it all they have on our vaccine campaign. We asked our members to use every advocacy tool and skill they had to make sure that we won this important fight to save 4 million children in five years. Thanks to this hard work we generated more than 300,000 signatures on our petition.
ONE members sent hundreds of letters to members of parliament in the UK, and in the USA we swamped the Whitehouse with tweets. In South America our volunteers recruited thousands of new members who have added to the weight of our international voice. In Australia ONE members called and emailed the foreign minister’s office, and in Germany the outstanding youth messengers were hard at work gathering support.
Because of your skill at advocacy, your hard work and a ton of determination, it worked. We won!
On Monday in London, world leaders and private donors promised a remarkable $4.3 Billion over the next 5 years – this exceeded the $3.7billion that we hoped for. When Bill Gates announced he was contributing a billion dollars to the fund, he mentioned our campaigning work in his speech.
This really has been a historic week and our Executive Director Jamie Drummond made this video to thank you.
As a campaigner for ONE, I can’t tell you how proud I am of each and every one of you and you all should be very proud of yourselves.
It just goes to show that when we use our voices and work together, we can make amazing, lasting change in the world. So, give yourselves a well-deserved pat on the back and tell us how you feel in the comments below. Thanks to you, millions of kids around the world have a brighter future.
Good news: Donors pledge total of $4.3 billion to GAVI
The good news in development often gets buried, deep below wars and debt and disaster. But today, world leaders made bold new pledges to the GAVI Alliance in support of child vaccines, making the choice clear for reporters, press secretaries and live-tweeters alike: today was going to be a good news day.
David Cameron, Andrew Mitchell, Bill Gates and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, together with members of the GAVI board
In fact, in spite of tough economic times, donors collectively pledged $4.3 billion between now and 2015 — surpassing GAVI’s $3.7 billion funding gap — setting GAVI and its partners on the path toward saving nearly 4 million children’s lives in the next 5 years.
Some notable pledges from the donor pool:
For a full breakdown of who committed what, visit GAVI’s website.
Of course, as advocates and legislators know well, pledges made do not always equal money in the bank, and so today marks just the first, critical step in our efforts to improve access to new and underutilized vaccines.
Today we can celebrate, though, after world leaders have affirmed with their pledges what we’ve been campaigning on for months: investing in vaccines for the world’s poorest children is a smart, cost-effective way to save lives.
Thanks to ONE members for your hard work on behalf of this campaign. Stay tuned for more GAVI analysis and commentary from ONE over the coming days.
Vaccines conference exceeds target to save 4 million lives in 4 hours
Today has seen an incredible campaign success for ONE and our partners. World leaders have promised a remarkable $4.3 billion over the next 5 years to support the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) in their drive to save lives by making new and underused vaccines available in the world’s poorest countries. This is well over the target of $3.7 billion.
The tremendous response from the international community means that GAVI will not only be able to meet demand for new vaccines against diarrhea and pneumonia, but also make an early start on its next priorities and redouble efforts to reach the poorest children in the most remote areas.
More than 300,000 ONE members took action on this crucial issue over recent weeks and signed our petition to world leaders, leaving them in no doubt they needed take the incredible opportunity to help save 4 million more lives over the next 5 years.
Today is a huge victory for mothers and children around the world in the fight against extreme poverty. It is extraordinary that the success of this conference can literally be counted in the millions of lives it has saved. UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Bill Gates should both be proud of their moral leadership and generosity that has helped secure this result. Leaders from USA, Norway, Sweden, Australia and around the world have lived-up to their responsibilities and secured the future for millions of children.
ONE also welcomed the European Commission finding additional funds to contribute to GAVI, and the Commission’s ongoing commitment to supporting country health systems. We now look to the Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs to give a more ambitious share of the Commission’s overseas development aid in the next long-term budget.
The GAVI alliance is a leading example of smart, innovative aid that really works, supporting families across Africa. Vaccines deliver measurable and cost-effective results.
Effective international aid has already helped put 46 million children in Africa in school since 1999 and more than 500 million people have been reached with antimalarial bednets in the past 2 years alone. Now millions of mothers in the poorest countries will be able to vaccinate their children against some of the deadliest diseases thanks to your support.
Thank you to everyone who took action. We really couldn’t have done it without you.
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About the Blog
The International ONE Blog is a daily log of the anti-poverty movement. The site is operated by ONE staff, with guest contributions from ONE volunteers, members and allies.
The content of each post and each comment represents the views of that author and does not necessarily reflect the views of ONE. ONE does not support or oppose any candidate for elected office, and any post expressing support or opposition for a candidate is not endorsed by ONE.
TAGS: GAVI, Vaccines, World Economic Forum