The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is pledging 10 billion US dollars over the next 10 years to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the poorest nations: they said increased vaccination could save the lives of more than 8 million children by 2020 and called for others to help fill the significant gaps in funding that still remain.

The Gateses announced the commitment at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland on Friday.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan welcomed the announcement and called the Gates Foundation’s commitment to vaccines “unprecedented”, but she emphasized that it was also “just a small part of what is needed”.

“It’s absolutely crucial that both governments and the private sector step up efforts to provide life-saving vaccines to children who need them most,” she added.

Bill Gates, who co-founded the computer software giant Microsoft where he works part time as Chairman and Chief Software Architect but now spends most of his time working with the philanthropic Foundation he and his wife established, said:

“We must make this the decade of vaccines.”

“Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before,” he added.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed 4.5 billion dollars to vaccine research, development and delivery since the couple set it up in 2000.

The Foundation played a leading role in establishing the GAVI alliance (formerly called the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation), a global health partnership between the private and public sectors that secures and directs money to help establish vaccine programs in poor countries.

Julian Lob-Levyt, CEO of the GAVI Alliance was also at the meeting.

Melinda Gates said the Foundation had made vaccines their number one priority because “we’ve seen firsthand their incredible impact on children’s lives.”

“Vaccines are a miracle,” she added, “with just a few doses, they can prevent deadly diseases for a lifetime.”

Working with a model developed by a group led by the Institute of International Programs at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Foundation estimated how much impact vaccines could make on childhood deaths over the next decade.

They found that if delivery of life-saving vaccines could be scaled up to cover 90 per cent of children who need them, including new vaccines to prevent severe diarrhea and pneumonia, 7.6 million children under the age of 5 could be saved between 2010 and 2019.

The total comes to 8.7 million children saved if you add the 1.1 million children whose lives could be saved by rapidly introducing a malaria vaccine from 2014.

The Gateses said the figures could be even higher if you add in additional vaccines that could be developed during this decade, such as for tuberculosis.

In a press statement, they said their new pledge was “inspired by the remarkable progress made on vaccines in recent years”, examples of which include:

  • Vaccination rates have reached an all time high, according to figures from the World Health Organization (WHO), rebouding from years of decline in the 1990s. Over the first decade of the millenium, the percentage of children in poor countries that received the basic diphtheria-tetanus -pertussis (DTP3) vaccine jumped from 66 to 79 per cent, the highest ever. Also, measles deaths worldwide fell by 77 per cent druing 2000-2008, with Africa showing a massive 92 per cent fall.

  • Routine vaccination has improved, with partnerships, like that focused on polio and measles, helping to build stronger foundations for new and existing vaccine programs. To ensure every child who needs a vaccine can hav one, programs need trained health workers, proper “cold chain function” to preserve vaccine integrity all the way along the supply chain to delivery, and surveillance.

  • New vaccines are increasingly available, such as those for severe diarrhea and pneumonia, two leading causes of child deaths worldwide. A paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine recently showed that the rotavirus vaccine has reduced severe diarrhea caused by the virus by more than 60 per cent in South Africa and Malawi.

  • Research and development gaining momentum and the pipeline for delivering new vaccines is more robust than ever. A promising experimental vaccine to protect children from malaria is currently going through late-stage trials, and a new vaccine program against meningitis is likely to start in Africa this year.

Public-private partnerships like the GAVI alliance and the Rotavirus Vaccine Program at PATH are “transforming the business of vaccines” said Bill Gates.

The Rotavirus Vaccine Program at PATH, brings together resources and expertise of vaccine companies, donors, UNICEF, WHO, the World Bank, and developing countries.

Lob-Levyt said:

“The GAVI Alliance was founded just 10 years ago and has already saved 5 million lives by increasing access to immunization in the world’s poorest countries.”

“The potential to make bigger strides in the coming decade is even more exciting,” he added.

The Gateses said that billions more are still needed from other donors to achieve the goal of 90 per cent coverage. There are critical funding gaps in GAVI and in other programs such as the global measles and polio programs, and more support is also needed for research and development into new vaccines.

Other speakers at the Forum also emphasized many of these points, and said in a press conference that major new funding was needed from donors, governments and the private sector to: rapidly increase immunization scale up to reach more of those in need; do lab research and trials on new vaccines; bring in new life-saving vaccines for pneumonia, severe diarrhea and other diseases; ensure a steady market for vaccines in developing countries and sufficient supplies from manufacturers.

Bill Gates also warned governments not to divert money for foreign aid into climate change, reported Reuters. Health should be the top priority he urged, stressing that better health also leads to lower birth rate.

Experts have suggested that the expanding world human population is one of the factors driving global warming.

Sources: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Reuters.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD