New GAVI Strategy To Strengthen Vaccine Delivery, Primary Health Care Systems

The Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has set parameters for a new five-year strategy for the public-private partnership that should not only expand delivery of priority vaccines but also strengthen primary health care systems that are a cornerstone to effective vaccine delivery.

Gavi Board

The Geneva Board meeting that ended yesterday concluded with a series of decisions that are to guide finalization of Gavi’s 2021-2025 goals and strategy, to be approved at the next Board meeting in June 2019.

“Unlike previous vaccine investment strategies, these vaccines will involve building new delivery platforms which will strengthen primary healthcare as a whole,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Gavi Board Chair, was quoted saying in a press release. “This life-course immunisation approach can help lay the foundation for strengthening primary healthcare as a whole by providing more moments in which a child, adolescent or adult is in contact with health workers.”

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala noted that the “global landscape has changed fundamentally since Gavi was created in 2000. While for Gavi the core focus remains on its current mission of accelerating access to vaccines and increasing equitable coverage in the world’s poorest countries, Gavi is also adapting to meet the challenges of the future.”

Vaccines to be prioritized: include hepatitis B birth dose to prevent chronic infection, which can lead to liver cancer; diphtheria; three pertussis & tetanus boosters at infancy, early childhood, and early adolescence; oral cholera vaccine – to reduce incidence of a disease that mainly affects poor people; human rabies vaccine; meningococcal A,C,W-containing vaccine to expand protection beyond meningitis A; and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) – to prevent one of the most common causes of bronchiolitis and pneumonia in children under 1 year of age.

The Board also agreed to continue investing in the global stockpile of cholera vaccines until 2020. The stockpile will support efforts by a Global Task Force on Cholera Control (GTFCC) to reduce by 90% deaths from the disease by 2030.

“Cholera is often an indicator of inequity and poverty,” said Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. “Outbreaks of this disease are currently on the rise, devastating families, communities and countries.

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is a public-private partnership committed to saving children’s lives and protecting people’s health by increasing equitable use of vaccines in lower-income countries.

 

Image Credits: Gavi.

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