The power of vaccines

Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi Alliance and Davos participant, on what can be done to bring vaccines to those who need them most.

As CEO of the GAVI Alliance, I am coming to Davos to talk about the challenges and opportunities of public-private partnerships, with an emphasis on innovative financing. The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting is the perfect place for a dialogue that brings together industry, civil society, UN agencies and countries around a shared response to the challenge of protecting children against vaccine preventable illness. In 2000, the Forum acted as midwife to the birth of GAVI and since then we have supported collaboration with a singular focus: giving children in developing countries the same protection from vaccines that children in developed countries receive.

In an increasingly complex world, we have a simple and bold vision that all children should have the opportunity to grow up healthy. The Annual Meeting 2013 theme of Dynamic Resilience challenges participants to move beyond simple solutions to strategic collaboration and new methods to create a more just and sustainable future for all.

This week, Forum participants will have the opportunity to consider global challenges, including the Millennium Development Goals. In the past, global goals have tended to be oriented around diseases as a proxy for immunization rates. I believe that the global community should now move to the idea of a “Fully Immunized Child”, which means measuring how many children have received all of the vaccines recommended by the Word Health Organization for global use that they need to keep them safe.

The pathway to a more sustainable future for all children must include access to the basic building blocks of good health, including nutrition, water and immunizations. To achieve this goal, business, governments and civil society will need to work together and find new and innovative ways to deliver vaccines equitably to all children and to measure that delivery. At GAVI, we take measurement seriously. It is the only way that we will ultimately help each country deliver on the goal of equity between and within countries.

Since 2000, in collaboration with our business, government, UN and civil society partners (many of whom are participants at the World Economic Forum), GAVI has helped to prevent more than 5.5 million deaths in the world’s poorest countries, and committed US$ 7.2 billion to new and underused vaccines and to strengthening health systems. We have added new vaccines that target the two largest killers of children – pneumonia and diarrhoea – and are now rolling out our second vaccine against HPV, which causes cervical cancer and kills 275,000 women a year. Yet, we estimate that 22 million children still lack access to vaccines, so we have our work cut out for us.

At Davos, I will be co-hosting a breakfast with Bill Gates to announce funding and partnerships made possible through the GAVI Matching Fund. The Fund is an innovative finance mechanism that matches contributions from companies, foundations, their customers, employees and business partners. The Fund also provides a setting for innovations in collaboration and the delivery of technical expertise to our shared mission of increasing access to vaccines for all children.

I have a passion and a sense of urgency about our mission because I know that vaccines offer an incredible return on investment, and that a vaccine dividend can be measured in lives improved and lives saved.

Last week GAVI convened a group of experts to examine the evidence on the value of vaccines. We knew that vaccines prevent sickness and death. But there’s also great evidence that being vaccinated helps people in many ways throughout their lives – building their health and their resilience. Children who are healthy – and have adequate nutrition – are much more likely to attend school. People who finish school, and do well, have higher earning potential in their adult lives. GAVI’s hope is that these healthy young people will enter the workforce and build the vibrant global economy of the future.

I am optimistic about the future because the evidence is clear about the economic impact of immunization. If parents don’t have to spend money on their children’s healthcare, they can use it for other purposes. If they don’t need to spend the money on health, they can spend or invest the money, which leads to economic growth in local communities and the country more broadly.

Healthy children are resilient children, and immunization is a fundamental building block for health. And the power of vaccines means that we can also target not only acute infectious diseases but also chronic infections that create chronic disease burdens that are so difficult to manage. At GAVI, we are committed to collaboration and partnership – working with business, governments, the UN and civil society to see more and more of the world’s children (and adults) fully immunized, wherever they live.

Author: Seth Berkley is CEO of Gavi Alliance is participating in the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting for his 10th year.

Image: A nurse prepares a vaccine in a clinic in Boston REUTERS/Brian Snyder