Geneva, 29 April 2020 – Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance has welcomed a pledge equivalent to £330 million per year for Gavi’s 2021-25 period announced today by Anne-Marie Trevelyan, Secretary of State for the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
The UK has been Gavi’s largest donor since its inception in 2000, playing a leading role in immunising a whole generation – over 760 million children – and helping to halve child mortality in 73 developing countries over the past two decades. The UK has also been a leading contributor to all Gavi’s innovative finance mechanisms, including the International Finance Facility for Immunisation. The UK pledge follows commitments from Germany and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USA, Saudi Arabia, TikTok, Reed Hastings & Patty Quillin, and Alwaleed Philanthropies.
“Gavi’s work has never been more important,” said Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chair of the Gavi Board. “Right now it is playing a vital role both keeping immunisation programmes going across the world, reducing the chances of there being further global disease outbreaks, as well as helping developing countries respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. As long as there are still pockets of this disease somewhere, everywhere is at risk. This pledge will make a huge difference to these efforts and I’d like to thank the UK, as Gavi’s biggest donor since its inception, for their leadership over the past two decades.”
“I’d like to thank the UK public for this pledge: an investment in Gavi is an investment in a safer, healthier world,” said Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi. “This funding will not only protect hundreds of millions of children against disease, it will also help health systems to repair and rebuild after the enormous impact of COVID-19 has subsided. This is our best shield against future pandemics which, as we have seen all too clearly in recent months, do not respect borders. Finally, it means we can continue our work leading international efforts to ensure universal access to a COVID-19 vaccine, as well as to maintain the infrastructure needed to deploy it at scale around the world, which offers our best means of ending this crisis.”
As well as pledging to Gavi’s 2021-25 period, the UK government will also host the Global Vaccine Summit on 4 June, which aims to raise a total of at least US$ 7.4 billion to support Gavi’s work over the next five years.
At Gavi’s last pledging conference, in Berlin in 2015, UK committed £1 billion (US$1.38 billion) to Gavi’s 2016-20 five-year period.
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