NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Several key policy changes are urgently needed at the GAVI Alliance to help reduce the number of children not benefitting from vaccination globally (22.6 million in 2012), the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said ahead of GAVI’s progress review meeting in Stockholm.

“We fully support GAVI’s mission of bringing new vaccines to children in developing countries, but we think that GAVI could improve its work in a number of areas so that more children can be protected from childhood killers,” said Dr. Manica Balasegaram, Executive Director of MSF’s Access Campaign. “Humanitarian actors are still not able to access vaccines at the GAVI price so they can act swiftly in emergencies, vaccine prices overall are still too expensive for countries to afford long term, and GAVI’s not doing enough to support the vaccination needs of older children.”