The UK will host a major international conference in 2020 to raise funds for life-saving vaccinations for some of the world’s poorest children, International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt has announced.
The conference will bring together political leaders, civil society, public and private donors, vaccine manufacturers and governments to support the global vaccination body Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which has protected 700 million children in countries like Malawi, Haiti and Cameroon from diseases like measles, whooping cough and pneumonia since 2000.
Hosting this conference demonstrates the UK’s ongoing commitment to global health security and creating equal access to vaccines for children, wherever they live, said Ms Mordaunt.
Next year’s event builds on previous Gavi replenishment conferences, the first of which was hosted in London in 2011 – which raised US$ 4.3 billion.
The UK is Gavi’s largest donor and is currently responsible for 25 per cent of Gavi’s budget. One-in-five children in Gavi countries are missing out on the full course of basic diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3) vaccine, while around one-in-seven children worldwide are missing out on the full course of DTP3 vaccine.
The UK has committed £1.44 billion to Gavi from 2016-2020. UK aid to Gavi will help vaccinate 76 million children, saving 1.4 million lives from vaccine-preventable diseases, by 2020.
Gavi helps drive down the price of vaccinations by pooling demand from the world’s poorest countries which has helped boost vaccine coverage from 60-to-80 per cent in Gavi-supported countries since 2000.