New global partnership to focus on reducing maternal and newborn mortality

USAID, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Government of Norway, Grand Challenges Canada, and the World Bank will announce tomorrow a new partnership that will seek innovative solutions to reduce maternal and newborn mortality in developing countries.

The launch event will be webcast live tomorrow (March 9) at 9:00am EST.

UK Govt. and Gates Foundation announce new commitment to eradicating Polio

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Bill Gates announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed an additional $102 million to support efforts to eradicate Polio.  British Prime Minister David Cameron also announced that the United Kingdom would double its current contribution to polio eradication (to a total of 60 million pounds).

Mr Cameron called on other donors to back the Global Polio Eradication Initiative as he announced the UK’s commitment that will see an extra 45 million children fully vaccinated against the disease.

In 20 years, polio cases have been reduced by 99 percent and the disease is now close to being only the second in history – after smallpox – to be wiped out. In 2010, India and Nigeria – historically the toughest challenges to eradication – cut cases by 95 percent each. However, today polio still exists in more than a dozen countries, crippling and killing children.

“We have come so far in eradicating polio. We are so close to delivering a polio-free world for all our children. Let’s finish the job. And let’s eradicate polio once-and-for-all,” said Prime Minister David Cameron.

 

 

GAVI welcomes a new global commitment to vaccines

A new partnership was announced today, injecting additional funding into the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation’s (GAVI) efforts to help save millions of children.  His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation entered into a partnership in which each committed US$ 50 million for immunisation programmes in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

GAVI will receive US$ 66 million to buy and deliver additional supplies of the five-in-one pentavalent vaccine and to support the introduction of new pneumococcal vaccines in Afghanistan. These vaccines help protect children from the main killers of children under five, including pneumonia, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type B (HiB), which causes meningitis.

“Private donations like this send a clear signal to our government donors that they are not alone in seeing the value of immunisation,” said Dagfinn Høybråten, Chair of the GAVI Alliance board.

Backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and an increasing number of sovereign governments since its launch in 2000, the GAVI Alliance has succeeded in immunising more than 288 million children, preventing more than five million premature deaths, according to WHO figures.

If fully funded, the GAVI Alliance will be able to immunise an additional 230 million children with pentavalent vaccine by 2015, and protect 90 million children with new pneumococcal vaccines which are already being introduced in the first of more than 40 developing countries. GAVI also plans to introduce vaccines against rotavirus in 33 countries.

Economic benefits of polio eradication estimated at US$40-50 billion

A new study, published in the journal Vaccine, estimates that the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) could provide net benefits of at least US$40-50 billion if transmission of wild polioviruses is interrupted within the next five years.

The study considers investments made since the GPEI was formed in 1988 and those anticipated through 2035. Over this time period, the GPEI’s efforts will prevent more than 8 million cases of paralytic polio in children. This translates into billions of dollars saved from reduced treatment costs and gains in productivity.

The study also reported that “add-on” GPEI efforts improve health benefits and lead to even greater economic gains. Notably, it estimates an additional $17-90 billion in benefits from life saving effects of delivering vitamin A supplements, which the GPEI has supplied alongside polio vaccines.

The global incidence of polio has been reduced by 99 percent since 1988 and type 2 wild polioviruses were eradicated in 1999. Intense efforts are underway to stop transmission of types 1 and 3 completely within the next several years, with indigenous transmission remaining only in relatively small areas in Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan and re-established transmission in a few countries, including Angola and the DRC.

GPEI is a public-private partnership led by national governments, spearheaded by the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the CDC, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and supported by organizations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Gates Foundation – 60 Minutes Interview

A very interesting interview on 60 minutes with Bill and Melinda Gates highlighting the work and priorities of the Gates Foundation.

Asked what the foundation’s global priorities are, Melinda Gates said, “HIV/AIDS, malaria, mother-and-child deaths, in that order.”

Immunization and the MDGs – report from the Red Cross/Red Crescent and GAVI Alliance

A new joint report (Immunization:  unfinished business) from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Socieities (IFRC) and the GAVI Alliance highlights the health impacts of vaccines and the value of partnerships in achieving complex goals such as Millennium Development Goal 4 — the reduction of childhood mortality.

The report highlights that:

• Immunization is a public health ‘best buy’ and significant contributor to the health-related Millennium Development Goals.
• There is untapped potential within vaccination, and millions more lives could be saved.
• A balanced immunization investment strategy with sustained funding is needed.

The Red Cross (IFRC) is convening a side event today (Sept. 20, 6:30 – 8:00 pm) at the forthcoming MDG Summit entitled “Unfinished business: reaching the MDGs with lessons learned from global polio eradication” to promote the lifesaving power of vaccination and the key lessons from polio eradication. The event will address

1. the GPEI lessons learned and their application to the MDGs;
2. the challenges and opportunities for applying these lessons to other global health initiatives; and
3. the collaboration and partnership required to accelerate progress towards the MDGs.

Co-hosting organizations include the Government of Nigeria, WHO, Rotary International, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI Alliance and the Afghan Red Crescent Society.

Fighting neglected diseases: anti-TB compounds offer hope

Compounds being developed against tuberculosis also show promise against deadly tropical diseases threatening millions of people.  As reported by Reuters, the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development has granted the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) rights to develop a class of potential anti-TB compounds offering hope of treating Chagas disease, African sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis.

Chagas, a disease caused by a parasite found mainly in rural areas of Latin America, kills some 14,000 people annually and an estimated 8 million are infected. Infection is lifelong and can lead to heart disease and heart failure. Some 100 million people are deemed at risk of the disease.

Leishmaniasis and sleeping sickness, formally known as human African trypanosomiasis, each kill roughly 50,000 people a year and pose a threat to a combined total of 400 million people.

The Gates Foundation is providing a $1.5 million grant to DNDi for preclinical assessments of compounds specifically for use against visceral leishmaniasis, a deadly parasitic infection spread by the bite of a sandfly.

Though found in Europe, Asia and Africa, leishmaniasis is most concentrated in India. An estimated 350 million people worldwide are deemed at risk from infection.

$4.3 billion needed to fund vaccines for world’s poor

$4.3 billion is needed if the GAVI Alliance is to meet its goal of supplying life-saving immunizations to millions of children in poor countries by 2015.  In 2000, world leaders from 189 countries signed up to the Millennium Development Goals to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015.

GAVI, which is supported by the World Health Organization, the World Bank, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and vaccine makers, says it has 40 percent of the $7 billion it needs between now and 2015 to help meet that goal.

“With $7 billion, (GAVI) will be able to fully roll out pentavalent vaccine and introduce new vaccines against pneumococcal disease and rotavirus diarrhea in over 40 countries,” it said in a statement. “These last two vaccines alone can save one million children by 2015.”

The scale of GAVI’s buying and distribution power allows it to secure much lower prices for vaccines, which are then supplied to poor nations at a fraction of their cost.

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Revolutionizing immunization campaigns? New technology keeps vaccines stable at tropical temperatures

British scientists have found a cheap and simple way of keeping vaccines stable, even at tropical temperatures, which could transform immunization campaigns in the developing world (Reuters).

The ability to transport vaccines at normal temperatures would reduce cost and greatly improve access to vaccines.

The newly discovered method involves mixing the vaccine with the sugars trehalose and sucrose and leaving it to dry out on a filter or membrane.  As the water evaporates, the vaccine mixture turns into a syrup and solidifies on the membrane, preserving the active part of the vaccine in a kind of suspended animation and protecting it from harm even at high temperatures.  Flushing the membrane with water rehydrates the vaccine in a few seconds,

The researchers managed to store two different virus-based vaccines on sugar-stabilized membranes for 4 to 6 months at 45 degrees Celsius (113F) without the medicines being damaged.

The next step in the research is to demonstrate that the process can be scaled up for large production with standard or newly-licensed human vaccines.  The work was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

$10 billion commitment to vaccine research and delivery – Gates Foundation

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced today that they will commit $10 billion over the next 10 years to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the world’s poorest countries (read more).  The Foundation estimates that increased vaccination could save more than 8 million children by 2020.

“We must make this the decade of vaccines,” said Bill Gates. “Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before.”

Bill and Melinda Gates said their pledge was inspired by the remarkable progress made on vaccines in recent years. For example:

• Record-breaking vaccine access: New WHO data show that global vaccination rates have reached all-time highs.
• Improved routine immunization: Partnerships focused on reducing diseases like polio and measles are also helping build a stronger foundation for the delivery of both new and existing vaccines.
• New vaccine introduction: Important new vaccines for the two leading causes of global child deaths—severe diarrhea and pneumonia—are becoming available.
• R&D momentum: The vaccine research and development pipeline is more robust than ever.

Many of the recent advances in vaccine development and delivery have been driven by public-private partnerships such as the GAVI Alliance and the Rotavirus Vaccine Program at PATH, which coordinate the resources and expertise of vaccine companies, donors, UNICEF, WHO, the World Bank, and developing countries.

This commitment by the Gates Foundation follows the recent release of two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine which estimated that vaccines against rotavirus could save 2 million children over the next decade.  The studies showed that vaccinating babies against rotavirus significantly cut deaths from diarrhea — by 61 percent in Africa and by 35 percent in Mexico.