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The high-level summit, co-hosted by Gavi and Spain, will be an opportunity to look back on the immunisation strategy outlined by the Vaccine Alliance at 2020’s Global Vaccine Summit in London
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Despite severe disruption caused by the pandemic, recent years have also highlighted the capacity for resilience in immunisation – with more vaccines administered by lower-income countries in 2021 than at any other time in history
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Professor José Manuel Barroso, Chair of the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance: "Leveraging our learnings from a historic global response, we are moving forward with a bold strategy to continue to grow routine immunisation, introduce new vaccines and reach more zero-dose children. I am delighted to be working with Spain to convene leaders from across global health as we reflect on this work and consider new ways to save lives through immunisation."
Geneva, 6 March, 2023 – Spain will join Gavi in co-hosting a high-level global summit bringing together global health stakeholders from multilateral organisations, governments, civil society, business and academia to take stock of the state of vaccination in Gavi-supported lower-income countries and look to the future.
This Summit will provide an opportunity to look at the impact achieved by the Vaccine Alliance during its current strategic period, which began in January 2021. Gavi and its partners faced the dual challenge of supporting routine immunisation while also responding to a once-in-a-century pandemic. Despite severe disruption, this period saw resilience, with more vaccines administered by lower-income countries in 2021 than at any other time in history and an increase in coverage for rotavirus vaccine, the second dose of measles-containing vaccine and pneumococcal conjugate vaccine.
Since 2021, Gavi has also played an increasing role in outbreak response with an unprecedented pandemic response effort with more than 1.9 billion COVID-19 doses shipped to 146 countries through COVAX and providing support to 32 outbreak response vaccination campaigns in 2022. The Vaccine Alliance is also revitalising its HPV vaccination programme and will support the roll-out of the world’s first malaria vaccine this year. The high-level summit will be an opportunity to evaluate progress on key goals and also to continue work towards 2025 objectives and beyond.
"Leveraging our learnings from a historic global response, we are moving forward with a bold strategy to continue to grow routine immunisation, introduce new vaccines and reach more zero-dose children. I am delighted to be working with Spain to convene leaders from across global health as we reflect on this work and consider new ways to save lives through immunisation," said Professor José Manuel Barroso, Chair of the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
Spain has been a long-standing global health leader and historic champion for immunisation, with growing support for Gavi over the past 17 years, including through the innovative instrument of the International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm). Spain was one of the six original founders of IFFIm in 2006 and is an important donor to this instrument, with a commitment of EUR 290 million over 30 years. Spain additionally played a major role in supporting vaccination during the pandemic as a donor of COVID-19 vaccines via the COVAX dose-sharing mechanism, with more than 52 million Spanish-donated doses delivered to date, mainly to low- and lower-middle income countries, and several million more doses currently in delivery. Spain also contributed funding to the Gavi COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC) and is the first country to have pledged towards Gavi’s malaria vaccine programme, with a commitment of EUR 10 million in early 2022. This support from the Spanish government is underpinned by a long-standing partnership with "la Caixa" Foundation, allowing Spanish companies, banking clients and Spanish citizens to contribute to Gavi’s vaccination programmes since 2008.
"Since we began our current strategic period in January 2021, the world has experienced significant shocks, with the Alliance at the forefront in responding to them," added Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi. "We have kept momentum strong in ensuring life-saving routine immunisation could continue; grown programmes for HPV and malaria vaccines; and co-led COVAX, which has shipped 1.9 billion doses to 146 countries around the world – a key factor in lower-income countries reaching COVID-19 vaccine coverage of 53% on average. We look forward to working with Gavi donors, implementing countries and other stakeholders in writing the next chapter of global vaccination."
MEDIA CONTACTS
Evan O’Connell
+41 79 682 18 95
eoconnell@gavi.org
Meg Sharafudeen
+41 79 711 55 54
msharafudeen@gavi.org
Cirũ Kariũki
+41 79 913 94 41
ckariuki@gavi.org
Collins Weru Mwai
+25 078 783 66 38
cmwai@gavi.org
Laura Shevlin
+ 41 79 529 92 87
lshevlin@gavi.org