Return on investment stories

Sudan recently became the first of many GAVI-eligible countries in Africa to introduce a new vaccine to protect children from rotavirus, the leading cause of severe infant diarrhoea.

Health workers and Ministry of Health officials in Tanzania have are gearing up for a huge task as they prepare to introduce a new vaccine against rotavirus, the leading cause of severe infant diarrhoea.

With nine women and nine men, an independent review committee (IRC) to monitor country progress is GAVI’s first committee to have a gender balance and marks another step forward for gender policy.

In Ethiopia, GAVI support for civil society organisations is helping the Consortium of Christian Relief and Development Association deliver routine immunisation to even the remotest communities.

When Kyrgyz doctors first started using the pentavalent vaccine in 2009, officials in the Central Asian nation s health ministry noticed immunisation coverage rates were going down. But the doctors' initial fears turned out to be the vaccine's greatest strength.

Dr Agnes Binagwaho, Permanent Secretary for Health at the Ministry of Health, explains why the Government of Rwanda is committed to GAVI's co-financing policy.

Rwanda health centre takes advantage of routine immunisation visits to teach mothers about benefits of family planning.

Since 2008, the number of countries required to co-finance new and underused vaccines supplied by GAVI has nearly doubled from 26 to 47 in 2010.

Training sessions for health workers set to help Kenya achieve its pneumococcal vaccine coverage target.

GAVI has prevented more than five million future deaths in just 10 years and pushed global immunisation coverage to its highest-ever level.

Just one and half years after Bolivia became the first GAVI-eligible country to introduce the rotavirus vaccine, a disease responsible for almost half of all hospitalisations for diarrhoea from 2006-2008, is on the retreat.

From 2002-2010, GAVI co-funded immunisation against hepatitis B in the west and central provinces of China. Today, less than 1% of children under 5 are chronic carriers of hepB.

GAVI support for strengthening the Vietnamese health service brings training and resources to even the remotest areas.

While GAVI was set up first and foremost to help countries introduce new and under-used vaccines, its programme support has also increased global access to the long-existing vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP).

The steady rise in the number of vaccine manufacturers based in emerging economies since 2001 represents a tell-tale sign of GAVI's true impact on the vaccine market.

GAVI and other leading donors to Nepal channel their financial support through a single system to streamline assistance for the national health programme.

In the first five years of the millennium, Cambodia achieved an almost 30% drop in infant and child mortality rates, but improvements in women's health failed to keep pace.

Vaccines bring added value to the economies of the world's poorest countries with GAVI's investment in immunisation set to yield an 18% rate of return by 2020, according to a Harvard School of Public Health study.

It has been a little over a year since Rwanda introduced a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine known as PCV7. The vaccine protects children against one of the most common causes of pneumonia – with encouraging results.

GAVI ranks fifth out of 38 bilateral and multilateral donors in a study measuring donors' performance against best practices established at the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.

For the pharmaceutical industry to offer fixed lower prices for developing countries, manufacturers need to see a vaccine market with sufficient size and income to cover their costs.

Despite the backdrop of a global financial crisis, GAVI received a record number of applications for funding from low-income countries in 2009, according to the latest edition of the Alliance's annual Progress Report.

By pooling donor contributions to make long-term vaccine orders and grouping developing countries into a single large-scale buyer, GAVI is helping make life-saving new vaccines more affordable for the world's poorest.

The GAVI-funded Hib Initiative paved the way for low-income countries to introduce vaccines against Haemophilus influenzae type b infection

Haemophilus influenzae type b disease was a serious public health problem in The Gambia before a life-saving vaccine was introduced.