The GAVI Alliance and its work in immunization are integral to the success of the new U.N. global health strategy, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at a high-level meeting of GAVI’s current and potential donors Oct. 6.
The meeting, which the U.S. and Norway are co-hosting in New York, is expected to lay the groundwork for a pledging session in 2011. GAVI said it needs to raise USD4.3 billion to expand its immunization programs between 2010 and 2015.
“The funding that GAVI is requesting would, in part, pay for the introduction of new vaccines to tackle major causes of the world’s two biggest childhood killers, pneumonia and diarrhoea, as well as advance the introduction of new vaccines against HPV, Japanese encephalitis, meningitis serogroup A, rubella and typhoid,” the alliance said in a news release.
At the New York meeting, GAVI donors and partners are expected to agree on how this money will be raised. GAVI stressed that the money is needed to avert up to 4.2 million deaths in the future.
