Even before the start of the corona pandemic, Gavi announced its 5-year strategy (“Gavi 5.0”) with the vision to leave no one behind in immunization. Now Gavi is actively working with global partners to combat the spread of COVID-19 in the Global South. In early August, Novavax announced that it signed a memorandum of understanding with Gavi, which will provide an additional 1.1 billion doses of vaccine for Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX), founded by Gavi, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Coalition for Epidemic Perparedness Innovations (CEPI) for fair vaccine distribution worldwide.
Pakistan, for instance, illustrates how such efforts pay off. The country has received approximately 111 million corona vaccine doses through COVAX. With this support, half of the population has already been vaccinated twice against COVID-19. In addition to the support during the pandemic, Gavi is also working on basic immunization in Pakistan. The WUENIC report published by WHO and UNICEF calculates that Pakistan’s immunization coverage significantly improved in 2021. A breakthrough was that the number of “zero-dose children” as defined by Gavi 5.0 dropped by half.
Gavi and the WHO achieved another breakthrough with the roll out of the first malaria vaccine. So far, Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi are part of this pilot project. Since 2019, 1.3 million children have already benefited from the vaccination campaign. In January 2023, the vaccine will also be launched in Nigeria, and by the end of 2022 other countries can apply for the second launch phase. To fund the program, 160 million dollars have been raised by international donors through Gavi.
Hence, Gavi is making an enormous contribution to achieving SDG 3. Click here for the factsheet.