Bill and Melinda Gates pledge $10 Billion for Vaccines

Assam News · January 29, 2010

On Friday, Bill and Melinda Gates announced that their foundation will commit $10 billion over the next 10 years to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the world’s poorest countries. Bill and Melinda Gates said that more investment in vaccines by governments and the private sector could help developing countries dramatically reduce child mortality by the end of the decade.

Bill Gates Polio Drops Bill and Melinda Gates made their announcement at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting, where they were joined by Julian Lob-Levyt, CEO of the GAVI Alliance. They called for others to help fill critical financing gaps in both research funding and childhood immunization programs. Bill and Melinda Gates said their pledge was inspired by the remarkable progress made on vaccines in recent years.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation used a model developed by a consortium led by the Institute of International Programs at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to project the potential impact of vaccines on childhood deaths over the next 10 years.

By significantly scaling up the delivery of life-saving vaccines in developing countries to 90 percent coverage, including new vaccines to prevent severe diarrhea and pneumonia, the model suggests that we could prevent the deaths of some 7.6 million children under 5 from 2010-2019. The foundation also estimates that an additional 1.1 million children could be saved with the rapid introduction of a malaria vaccine beginning in 2014, bringing the total number of potential lives saved to 8.7 million.

The new funding announced today is in addition to the $4.5 billion that the Gates Foundation has already committed to vaccine research, development and delivery to date across its entire disease portfolio since its inception. Today’s commitment will support a broad spectrum of vaccine-related activities, from basic research to innovations in delivery. Still, billions more are needed from other donors to achieve the goal of 90 percent coverage of childhood immunization.

Source: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

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