Bill & Melinda give $750 million for vaccines and immunization

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a grant of $750 million, and Norway committed $290 million, to support the work of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). In making the announcement today, Bill Gates called on other donors to address the major funding gap for children’s immunization programs in developing countries.

GAVI was launched in 2000 to address the fact that more than two million people in developing countries die needlessly each year because they do not receive the immunizations that are taken for granted in the industrialized world.

Since its inception, GAVI has helped prevent more than 670,000 deaths in the world’s poorest countries by improving access to basic children’s vaccines, accelerating introduction of new vaccines, and strengthening vaccine delivery systems.

“Supporting children’s immunization is undoubtedly the best investment we’ve ever made. In just five years, GAVI’s efforts have saved hundreds of thousands of children’s lives, and its work in the coming years will save millions more,” said Bill Gates, co-founder of the Gates Foundation. “But today’s commitments are only a down payment. Rich countries can and should increase immunization funding to give children in developing countries a better shot at a healthy life.”

Melinda Gates, co-founder of the Gates Foundation, also emphasized the urgent need for more resources for children’s immunization. An estimated 27 million children in the developing world still aren’t immunized each year; in 2002, this resulted in 2.1 million deaths. WHO estimates that $8 to $12 billion will be needed from both donor and developing country governments from 2005 to 2015 to immunize children in the poorest countries with vaccines available today; more will be needed to introduce new vaccines now in the development pipeline.

“Today, a child’s access to life-saving vaccines too often depends on where he or she lives in the world, and that’s unacceptable,” Mrs. Gates said. “Vaccines taken for granted in rich countries still don’t get to millions of children in the developing world. This is a solvable problem – it’s time for donors, both public and private, to dramatically step up their efforts to close the immunization gap.”

The Gates Foundation made an initial grant of $750 million in 1999 to The Vaccine Fund, GAVI’s financing arm. Today’s grant to The Vaccine Fund, a 10-year commitment, brings the foundation’s total support for childhood immunization to more than $1.5 billion. The two grants are the largest the foundation has made to date.