The GAVI Alliance (GAVI) (formerly The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) is an alliance between different stakeholders, in both the private and public sectors, committed to the mission of saving children's lives and protecting people's health through the worldwide expansion of childhood vaccination programs.
Launched in 2000 at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the GAVI Alliance includes among its partners developing country and donor governments, the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine industry in both industrialized and developing countries, research and technical agencies, NGOs, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is estimated that more than 2.3 million early deaths will have been prevented as a result of support by GAVI up to the end of 2006.
GAVI's efforts are critical to achieving the Millennium Development Goal on child health, which calls for reducing childhood mortality by two-thirds by 2015. Of the more than 10 million children who die before reaching their fifth birthday every year, 2.5 million die from diseases that could be prevented with currently available or new vaccines.
The International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm) was created in 2006 to raise capital for GAVI by frontloading government donations through the sale of bonds on the open market. The first offering, in November 2006, raised $1 billion.
Accelerated Development and Introduction Plans (ADIPs)
Historically, the time between introduction of a vaccine in the developed world and the developing world has been up to 15 to 20 years. For example, only 10% of infants in the world’s poorest countries had access to Hib and hepatitis B vaccines 15 to 18 years after certification. The ADIPs program aims to shorten the time lag between vaccines being proven safe and effective for use and their introduction in developing countries. GAVI has funded two ADIPs: pneumoADIP and the Rotavirus Vaccine Program. PneumoADIP, based at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, aims to accelerate the evaluation of and access to new, lifesaving pneumococcal vaccines for the world's children. The Rotavirus Vaccine Program, a partnership between PATH, the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, aims to make rotavirus vaccines accessible to children worldwide. However there are growing global concerns that GAVI platform is used by pharmaceutical companies to mint huge profits by forecefully selling their drugs to least developing countries. Especially in case of Merck Corp. where Bill gates holds majority of the shares and then uses GAVI to market its vaccines to under developed countries.
