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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 efforts 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.
Were 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 were
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 countrys 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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