Last year was full of “big events” for public health, including the launch of a new meningitis vaccine and an aggressive new strategy for polio eradication, the head of the United Nations health agency said today, while stressing the need to ensure that progress is maintained in the year ahead. (UN Daily News)
Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), noted in her address to the agency’s Executive Board in Geneva that a major issue is how much the financial crisis and economic downturn will affect public health, both internationally and within individual countries.
“Will progress stall? Will powerful innovations, like the meningitis vaccine, like the vaccines for preventing diarrhoeal disease and pneumonia, like the new diagnostic test for tuberculosis, fall short of reaching their potential?”
The Director-General noted that many organizations in global health, like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI Alliance), and WHO itself, now face serious funding shortfalls.
In her wide-ranging speech, Ms. Chan also noted that experience showed that health initiatives survive long enough to deliver sustainable results only when they are nationally owned and aligned with national priorities and capacities.
“Self-reliance is realized only when programmes are delivered in ways that strengthen existing systems, infrastructures and capacities. Doing so helps countries reduce their dependence on aid and gives donors an exit strategy.”
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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.
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