David Cameron has more than doubled Britain’s contribution to funding vaccination of the world’s poorest children, he announced at a pledging conference on Monday, June 13th.
The prime minister affirmed that Britain is pledging to donate an additional £814 million to vaccinate more than 80 million children in the poorest countries by 2015 against common conditions such as pneumonia and diarrhoea.
The UK government hosted the “Saving children’s lives - the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) Replenishment Conference” in London.
“This will save 1.4 million lives,” said Mr Cameron in reference to the UK’s contribution.
“That is one child vaccinated every two seconds for five years. That is one child’s life saved every two minutes,” he added.
The UK has already pledged £2 billion towards immunisation over the next 30 years, more than any other country. The GAVI Alliance had set the target of raising US$3.7 billion from donors worldwide.
Andrew Mitchell, UK Secretary of State for International Development, announced at a press conference on Monday: “We have exceeded the figure that we set ourselves. We have reached firm pledges for a sum of 4.3 billion US dollars at the pledging conference today.”
The global contribution will enable the vaccination of more than 250 million children in the poorest parts of the world against five killer diseases and save 4 million lives.
It was an “historic replenishment”, he said.
Mitchell said that it was a good investment of taxpayers’ money.
“For the price of a cup of coffee it is possible to vaccinate a child in the poor world from the five key killer diseases,” he said.
Ensuring value for money is a key factor for Alliance members.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and one of the leading donors to GAVI, has pledged $1 billion (£616 million) towards the initiative for the next five years.
“This is the first time we can say that poor children will not be refused the vaccines that children in rich countries get because there’s not enough money,” he said at the press conference.
A thrilled Gates said that the purpose of the conference was twofold: to reduce the cost of vaccines for developing countries and raise money.
“Getting this rotovirus vaccine [for diarrhoea] down to 2.50 [US dollars] a dose, that’s a milestone,” he said.
GAVI is a global health partnership that represents stakeholders in immunisation from both private and public sectors, including developing world and donor governments, and private sector philanthropists and vaccine manufacturers.
A question was raised at the press conference about the safety of the vaccines and concern about possible adverse effects. GAVI members responded that the vaccines underwent rigorous testing for safety.
Dr Richard Sezibera, a GAVI board member, said that speaking for Africa, they now had access to vaccines that were previously only available to the Western world.
“Infant mortality was down,” he said.
Some in the government have questioned the increase in foreign aid at a time of cuts in public spending at home.
Cameron defended his decision at the conference. “When you make a promise to the poorest children in the world, you should keep it,” he said.
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