This week I traveled to Brussels for one of my favourite things. No, not freshly made Belgian waffles (although I confess I had a couple of those), but instead to talk about how Global Citizens can help get world leaders to invest in Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, who in turn can help developing countries protect the lives of over 300 million children. Here’s the top ten things I learnt…
1) Gavi has already helped immunise over 440 million children and prevent 6 million future deaths since 2000.
Image Credit: Results UK
2) More than half of the children that Gavi has vaccinated are in Muslim-majority countries.
3) Every country pays towards their vaccines, even the poorest, who pay 20 cents towards the cost of each vaccine; and this share goes up as those countries become wealthier until they pay for all the vaccines themselves and then ‘graduate’ from needed Gavi’s assistance.
4)India is the latest country to become a new donor to Gavi, even though it still receives funding itself! This is because, although India will soon graduate, they are already preparing to support other countries in the future.
5) GlaxoSmithKline - the world’s largest drug company - announced at the meeting that they will freeze the lowest cost of vaccines for graduating countries for at least five years; meaning that those countries won’t suddenly be hit with higher market costs overnight. And their CEO, Sir Andrew Whitty, also challenged other drug companies to do the same.
6) Despite the heavy cuts that the Australian Government have made to their aid budget, and the fact that the Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has only made three speeches on aid since she took office last year, she has mentioned Gavi and the power of vaccines in a good light in all three speeches. So hopefully that bodes well for a future commitment.
7) If Gavi doesn’t hit it’s funding target of $7.5bn, women and girls will be the worst affected, as HPV, Measles and Rubella vaccines will likely be the first to be cut.
8) However, if we can convince governments to invest and Gavi does hit it’s target, then it will have economic benefit of $80-100 billion for developing countries.
9) And if Gavi raises just 1% above it’s target, that will help prevent another 150,000 future deaths!
10) Germany also announced that they will host the next Replenishment Conference (which was launched at the meeting) in early 2015, shortly before they host world leaders for the G7 summit of world leaders.
As a Global Citizen, you can tell the leaders what you think by signing our petition at the top of this page, right now.
Ciarán Norris, UK Campaigns Officer