AP Features, November 28th, 2007
An innovative project using capital markets to raise money for aid has allowed medical workers to provide nearly US$1 billion (more than euro600 million) in immunizations and other basic health services in poor countries this year.
The Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) said Wednesday that the money was being spent on shots against polio, measles, yellow fever, tetanus — preventable diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of people in the developing world — and in training health workers and improving cold chains needed to store vaccines.
Graca Machel, who heads the GAVI Alliance's board, called the new financing facility "a good example of a promise made to children which has been fulfilled in a very short period of time.
"It is an innovation in the way we mobilize resources for development," said Machel, Mozambique's former first lady who is now married to Nelson Mandela.
The so-called International Finance Facility for Immunization was the brainchild of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. It aims to raise a total US$4 billion (euro2.7 billion) and prevent 5 million childhood deaths by 2015 by vaccinating more than 500 million children against measles, tetanus, yellow fever and other preventable diseases.
So far, Britain, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and South Africa have pledged donations to the fund. Brazil has indicated it wants to become involved and there are hopes that other big developing countries like China and India might follow. The United States, although one of the biggest donors to GAVI, is not involved in the finance facility because of legal technicalities.
The facility borrows off the capital markets on the basis of pledges running through to 2020, meaning that money that will be donated in five or 10 years is available to spend immediately.
Alan Gillespie, chairman of the finance facility's board, said US$912 million (euro618.43 million) was being spent this year in 43 of the world's poorest countries.
The spending is credited with preventing a yellow fever epidemic in Cameroon earlier this year and adding muscle to the push to eradicate polio as a major health problem in sub-Saharan Africa.
GAVI is an alliance of governments, U.N. organizations, the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and pharmaceutical companies.
