Donors commit historic vaccine funding levels
Global health leaders stress vaccine delivery, development
Major public and private donors have achieved a milestone in global health by committing historic levels of funding to deliver vaccines to more than 250 million of the world’s poorest children. At Monday’s pledging conference hosted by the GAVI Alliance in London, donors committed $4.3 billion, exceeding GAVI’s initial target of $3.7 billion for the conference, to deliver lifesaving vaccines against global health diseases such as pneumonia, rotavirus, meningitis A, yellow fever, and measles. The $4.3 billion will also help prevent more than four million premature deaths. Leaders also stressed the need to support research for vaccines that do not yet exist, including for diseases such as HIV and malaria, in order to save even more lives in the future.
“Today is an important moment in our collective commitment to protecting children in developing countries from disease,” said Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, whose government co-hosted the conference with the United Kingdom and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “But every 20 seconds, a child still dies of a vaccine-preventable disease. There’s more work to be done.”
At the conference, world governments more than doubled their previous commitments to GAVI. For example, the United States will devote $450 million to GAVI over the next three years, pending Congressional approval. “At a time when budgets around the world are being scrutinized, this partnership with donor and host country governments, civil society, and private-sector partners ensures our development dollars have the greatest impact,” said Rajiv Shah, administrator for the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
According to Shah, the US commitment to GAVI will not only help save lives immediately by delivering existing vaccines. It also “strengthens mechanisms to assure that we can save more lives by having lower- cost tools available like future vaccines against malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV.” Indeed, Shah stated that US support for GAVI complements efforts at agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and USAID to support research and development (R&D) for new global health vaccines.
Additional leaders in global health have highlighted the need for the United States to support vaccine R&D, not only to save lives worldwide but also to advance domestic interests. At a recent event hosted by the Global Health Technologies Coalition (GHTC) and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), Washington Post columnist and ONE Senior Fellow Michael Gerson said that research for global health vaccines and other products helps to boost state economies by providing employment opportunities and supporting academic institutions, as well as benefit US diplomatic efforts.
American military leaders want to “undergo a revolution in the way we view American power in the last ten years, from being primarily military in a lot of circumstances to a much greater emphasis on soft power and how we exert influence in distant parts of the world,” Gerson said. He added that “these elements of soft power,” such as US support for new global health tools, are “equally important” to military operations to achieve American foreign policy goals. “People who are on the ground … understand that power is not just military power. We exert our influence on world events in much different ways.”
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