GAVI Watch [to 26 April 2014]
http://www.gavialliance.org/library/news/press-releases/

:: Independent report recommends strong U.S. support for GAVI Alliance
Press Release
Excerpt
Washington, DC, 25 April 2014 – The U.S. government should expand its support of the GAVI Alliance with an increased, multi-year pledge toward the 2016-2020 programme period, while also strengthening its field activities to back GAVI-financed work in implementing countries, according to an independent report by a leading think tank…

:: GAVI Alliance to present plans to expand impact of vaccines by 2020
Press Release
Excerpt
Geneva, 23 April 2014 –
“…the GAVI Alliance will be preparing for a key meeting to be held next month in Brussels, where the Alliance will set out the significantly increased impact that can be achieved by supporting immunisation programmes in the world’s poorest countries through to 2020.

European Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs, will host the meeting on May 20 where GAVI Alliance will present to its partners the funding requirements needed during the five-year period from the beginning of 2016 to build upon the gains already achieved against the biggest killers of children.

“We are on the eve of a unprecedented expansion of vaccination programmes,” said Dagfinn Høybråten, Chair of the GAVI Alliance. “Since 2000, GAVI Alliance partners have vaccinated an additional 440 million children, saving six million lives. In Brussels, we will present an historical opportunity to go even further and secure a healthy future for a generation of vaccinated children in developing countries, a generation that hold the keys to their countries’ futures.”

Immunisation is widely recognised as one of the most successful and cost-effective health interventions ever introduced, preventing between 2 and 3 million deaths every year. Yet each year more than 22 million children – many of them in the poorest and most remote communities – have little or no access to a full course of the most basic vaccines. One in five of all children who die before the age of five lose their lives to vaccine-preventable diseases.

Central to the Alliance’s on-going drive to immunise more children has been an unprecedented acceleration in the number of new vaccines introduced by the 73 countries that receive GAVI support. Between 2011 and the end of 2013, 93 new vaccine introductions were initiated with GAVI support and a further 50 are projected for 2014.

In 2011, donors backed the Alliance with US$ 7.4 billion of funding for programmes from 2011 to 2015. The Alliance set itself the target of immunising nearly a quarter of a billion children, during that period. Last October in Stockholm, the GAVI Mid-Term Review confirmed that the Alliance partners are on track to meet this goal.
Full text: http://www.gavialliance.org/Library/News/Press-releases/2014/GAVI-Alliance-to-present-plans-to-expand-impact-of-vaccines-by-2020/