The public-private partnership for vaccines, the GAVI alliance, raised some $7.5 billion on Tuesday. From the AP:
The Gates Foundation gave $1.55 billion to the public-private Gavi alliance that has immunized hundreds of millions of children worldwide since 2000.
Britain pledged $1.57 billion, Norway gave $969 million and the United States pledged $800 million at a conference Tuesday in Berlin.
Together with prior pledges this provides Gavi with a pot of $9.6 billion — slightly more than it requested — for its work between 2016 and 2020.
The Geneva-based organization said that the money would help immunize an additional 300 million children against preventable diseases, providing one of the most cost-effective ways to prevent millions of premature deaths.
—————————————-
Global Health and Development Beat
In a rare success amid Syria’s civil war, the United Nation’s World Health Organization says there hasn’t been a new polio case reported in the war-torn country for the past year.
In Uganda stories of people dying because of medical neglect are all too common, reports AFP. But with the country plagued by a shortage of health workers, anger is mounting over government plans to “export” at least 241 medical workers to Trinidad and Tobago.
A food crisis is unfolding in southern Iraq, where thousands of internally displaced refugees who have moved there from other parts of the country do not have enough to eat, a United Nations agency said on Tuesday.
Liberia’s president announced the closure of an Ebola treatment facility which lay at the epicentre of the virus’s worst outbreak in history, as the disease’s spread has slowed in the country.
The three West African countries worst hit by Ebola risk a “double disaster” unless a multi-million dollar plan is put in place to help their economies recover, Oxfam said on Tuesday.
A recent sharp drop in new Ebola infections in West Africa is prompting scientists to wonder whether the virus may be silently immunizing some people at the same time as brutally killing their neighbors.
The international emergency response organization, International Rescue Committee, warns caution should be used when interpreting what the declining Ebola case numbers really mean.
Plague has killed 57 people out of 213 known cases in Madagascar and more deaths are feared after recent flooding forced tens of thousands of people from their homes and set rats on the run, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
—————————————-
Spotlight on PSI
CARE recently brought a congressional delegation to Cambodia to highlight the great strides and continued obstacles in ensuring the health of mothers in developing countries. The group, which included Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX-12), Rep. Mike Quigley, (D-IL-05), Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-FL-04), and Former Assistant to President George W. Bush and Chief of Staff to First Lady Laura Bush Anita McBride, visited Population Services Khmer, PSI’s network partner in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
The vital work of the “one-stop-shop for women needing reproductive health services” is featured in the video above. After touring the facility, McBride offers this advice to the US government: “Stay involved and stay engaged. Resources are being used very effectively. … Our small investments are making a difference. … It’s helping the people in the countries where we are supporting them, it’s helping them help themselves.”
For more information on the trip and PSK’s clinic, go here.
—————————————-
Buzzing in the Blogs
Bill Gates dismissed criticisms regardint he high prices of vaccines, in a conversation with the Guardian at a major international vaccine-funding conference in Berlin. From the Guardian:
Gates denied that the cost of the new vaccine against pneumococcal disease was too high.
“Pneumococcus vaccine saves lives for about $1,000 per life saved,” said Gates. “So if you are going to do any helping at all, ever build a hospital, ever pay a doctor, you would [be willing to] pay for pneumococcus vaccine.”
The humanitarian aid organisation Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) last week called publicly for the two big pharma companies making the vaccine to drop the price to $5 per child. Each child needs three doses of the vaccine.
At the pledging meeting for Gavi, the global vaccines alliance, hosted by German chancellor Angela Merkel, MSF organised a stunt featuring supporters dressed as Merkel, David Cameron, Barack Obama and others spinning “Pharma’s wheel of fortune”, claiming that whichever way the wheel was spun, the drug companies always won.
However, immunisation, Gates said, “is the cheapest thing ever done in health. This general thing where organisations come out and say, ‘hey, why don’t vaccines cost zero?’ – all that does is that you have some pharma companies that choose never to do medicines for poor countries because they know that this always just becomes a source of criticism. So they don’t do any R&D [research and development] on any product that would help poor countries. Then they’re not criticised at all because they don’t have anything that these people are saying they should price at zero.”
—————————————-
Capital Events
Thursday
9:00 AM – When Women Trade, Can We End Hunger – The Washington International Trade Association
6:00 PM – Global health discussion group happy hour – Young Professionals in Foreign Policy
Friday
8:30 AM – International Health and Nutrition Workgroup Planning Meeting – SID
12:15 PM – Accelerating Progress to Overcome Malnutrition – IFPRI
—————————————-
By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
Subscribe to receive the Daily Impact in your inbox each morning!
Have a news or story tip? Email us at [email protected].
Disclaimer: Opinions presented in this email do not necessarily reflect the views of PSI.
