Immunization: New hope for children

Photo: A Rwandan woman refugee health worker, trained by the NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres, vaccinates a child held by her mother, in a crowded tent in the Benaco Camp in the remote Ngara district of north-western Tanzania.

On 24 November, 1999, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced it would support the developing alliance with a five year grant of $150 million a year -- a total of $750 million. The funds -- which will support the GAVI initiative -- will be received by the Global Fund for Children's Vaccines.

Audio clips: UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy (RealAudio format) How children's lives can be saved. (109 KB) A chance to immunize more children. (134 KB)

The 24 November gift set the stage for further and more complete announcements about the Fund and GAVI in Davos, Switzerland on January 31, 2000.

Though the unveiling of proposed GAVI programmes will await the Davos meeting, a broad outline of the effort includes:

• Improved access to sustainable immunization services;
• Expanded use of all cost-effective vaccines;
• Accelerated introduction of new vaccines;
• Speedy efforts to create new vaccines and related products targeted to improving the health of children in developing countries; and
• Making immunization a central element in assessing international development efforts.

The story of immunization is many-faceted and has been central to UNICEF's progress over five decades. Current immunization efforts save as many as three million young lives a year and prevent an estimated 750,000 cases of blindness, paralysis and mental disability annually.

Immunization remains the most cost-effective means of preventing disease. Not only are hospital and treatment costs avoided but, when combined with adequate nutrition, immunization is the foundation of the basic health essential to optimal early childhood development.

Much of the investment in building the infrastructure for routine immunization has already been made. Now, in addition to providing continuing protection against diptheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio, measles and tuberculosis, GAVI will support developing country efforts to tackle other potential killers, including hepatitis B, Hib and yellow fever.

Watch this space for updates as the movement to provide truly universal immunization to the world's children rolls from its Davos launch to on-the-ground programmes and campaigns where new chapters of the world's most successful public health story remain to be written.