The GAVI Alliance is a global partnership dedicated to improving world health by ensuring access to immunization in developing nations. GAVI is working with governments in developing nations to build sustainable immunization programs and to ensure access to affordable vaccines now and in the future.

A Partnership to Reach Those in Need

By the end of the 20th century, approximately 30 million children were born each year with little or no access to critical immunization. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, fewer than 50 percent of all children were immunized. An estimated 3 million people died annually due to preventable disease. The GAVI Alliance (formerly known as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) was formed in response. It is a public-private partnership of governments, UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, civil society organizations, vaccine manufacturers, and public health and research organizations.

As of December 2009, GAVI’s support contributed to the following results:

• averted 5 million future cumulative deaths due to hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), pertussis, measles, polio, and yellow fever.
• A cumulative 233 million additional children immunized against hepatitis B.
• A cumulative 60 million additional children immunized against Hib.
• A cumulative 69 million additional children received the DTP3 (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis) vaccination.

Today, GAVI is working with governments in the world’s poorest countries — representing 81 million children and 86 percent of the number of unimmunized children — to strengthen national vaccination programs.

Catalyzing innovation for immunization GAVI has targeted debilitating and deadly diseases that can be prevented with proper vaccines, as well as supporting governments to strengthen their immunisation and health systems. GAVI’s initial focus was on accelerating access to new and underused vaccines, such as hepatitis B, Hib and yellow fever.

GAVI and its partners have also blazed a path for innovative financing for health and development. The International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm) has significantly boosted funds available for immunisation. With long-term funding commitments from sovereign governments, IFFIm issues bonds on capital markets. As of mid-2009, IFFIm had raised $2.4 billion (U.S.) to support GAVI’s programs. GAVI’s current efforts include the following:

New vaccine support for the developing world: GAVI is expanding support to new vaccines against pneumococcal disease and rotavirus disease - the major infectious disease killers of children under the age of 5. This is the first time in history that vaccines will be available in the developing world at nearly the same time as in industrialized countries. Efforts to ensure these new vaccines reach children in the developing world, and reduce the rates of under 5 mortality, are a major focus of GAVI and its partners. The Advance Market Commitment for pneumococcal vaccine is a finance mechanism to create the market conditions for investment in research and development of a vaccine tailored to the developing world, which will be available in adequate supply and at an affordable price.

Boosting uptake of pentavalent vaccine: GAVI and its partners have played a key role in shaping the market conditions that have led to growing demand for the pentavalent vaccine, an easy to deliver 5-in-one formulation that combines DTP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis) with hepatitis B and Hib vaccines. By 2009, 57 countries have introduced pentavalent with GAVI support. With GAVI support, more than 18 million children in India will be immunised with pentavalent vaccine.

Prioritizing future vaccines: GAVI has selected four vaccines for future investment because they address diseases which have the greatest burden in developing countries. They include the new vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV) which causes cervical cancer - the second leading cause of cancer death in women in the poorest countries - as well as vaccines against typhoid, Japanese encephalitis and rubella.

Supporting childhood vaccinations in Rwanda: As one example of the impact of GAVI support in a country, immunization rates for babies in Rwanda rose from 69 percent in 2002 to 97 percent in 2008. The Rwandan government credits GAVI, which began supporting the nation in 2003. (GAVI gave $6.1 million for immunization programs in Rwanda in 2008, and $3.9 million in 2009.) The money is used to support local health clinics used by hundreds of thousands of families, and to pay for the pentavalent vaccine—a single shot that immunizes against pneumonia, meningitis, hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. Rwanda is also now the first low-income country to receive the new pneumococcal vaccine with support from GAVI and its partners.

To learn more about how The GAVI Alliance is supporting immunisation around the world, visit The GAVI Alliance web site.