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Aid effectiveness

GAVI ensures its support to developing countries has maximum impact by being transparent, accountable and results-oriented.

The GAVI Alliance uses the principles set out in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness to guide its work. This international agreement, signed in March 2005, commits ministers, heads of agencies and other stakeholders in aid to harmonising their efforts and monitoring results using rigorous indicators.

The principles of aid effectiveness are enshrined in the four core areas of GAVI’s work.

1. Country-driven programmes

GAVI believes that the 72 developing countries it supports know best how to increase their immunisation coverage. The Alliance asks them to set their own immunisation priorities and keep ownership of vaccination programmes from start to finish.

GAVI facilitates this process by providing multi-year funding which covers the duration of individual countries' health and immunisation plans. By May 2009, GAVI's support amounted to $4 billion, committed to 2015.

2. Predictable funding

The fact that GAVI’s support is predictable gives developing countries the security to expand their immunisation and child health programmes, and provides an incentive to vaccine manufacturers to increase production. In turn vaccine supplies are stabilised and increased competition drives prices down.

The International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm) has raised more than US$ 1.6 billion of predictable financing for GAVI programmes since its launch in 2006. IFFIm finances have scaled-up health and immunisation efforts in more than 70 countries.

3. Results-based support

The GAVI Alliance encourages countries to go beyond their original immunisation targets by offering cash rewards if additional children are immunised. Countries are then allowed to spend the reward money on improving health care delivery services thereby facilitating even wider vaccination coverage.

From 2000 to 2007, GAVI’s support has averted 3.4 million premature deaths, according to WHO figures.

4. Harmonised aid

By its very nature the GAVI Alliance brings together all the varied stakeholders in immunisation, from donor countries and implementing governments, to civil society organisations, vaccine industries and international financiers. Through GAVI, public and private sector organisations work together to ensure that aid programmes are harmonised and efficiently carried out to maximise the impact of immunisation support.

Applying the Right to Health to GAVI's HSS proposals

In 2008, the GAVI Secretariat commissioned a piece of work that aimed to apply the Right to Health approach to HSS proposals that have been received. This work made observations as well as some recommendations to strengthen the Alliance’s approach to achieving universal access to vaccines. Click to view: the full report (PDF 3600), appendix 5 (PDF 186K) and appendix 6 (PDF 268K).

International Health Partnership

The International Health Partnership (IHP) brings together developing countries and donor countries, and leaders from all of the major health agencies and foundations to help save millions of lives by improving coordination and supporting national health systems in some of the poorest countries of the world.

"Launched in September 2007, IHP is part of a renewed global push to meet the health Millennium Development Goals (MDGS) – cutting child deaths, improving maternal mortality and fighting major diseases."

Launched in September 2007, IHP is part of a renewed global push to meet the health Millennium Development Goals (MDGS) – cutting child deaths, improving maternal mortality and fighting major diseases. It is about putting into practice the internationally agreed principles of aid effectiveness.

The IHP aims to make health aid work better for poor countries by doing three things:

  • focusing on improving health systems as a whole and not just on individual diseases or issues;
  • providing better coordination among donors; and
  • developing and supporting countries’ own health plans.

Since the launch of the IHP, implementation has moved to the country level, where development partners and Ministries of Health sign national compacts or agreements. Following Mozambique, Ethiopia and Nepal, Mali was the fourth country to sign a national compact in April 2009. Watch a short film on the partnership and expectations of the compact in Mali.