By Hamu Madzedze
Online Journalist from Zimbabwe
Gavi ,The Vaccine Alliance Board has approved the details of a 500 million united states dollar fund aimed at securing early access to vaccines and to protect existing immunisation programmes within the days of pandemic or a public health emergency of international concern being declared.
The international organisation said this move came into effect following a key lesson from the COVID 19 pandemic, that delayed access to financing can significantly impede equitable access to vaccines.
Gavi's Director of Development Finance David Kinder said the First Response Fund is unique in that no other existing international mechanism provides "at risk" to help ensure lower -income countries can secure a priority place for pandemic vaccines .
The First Response Fund is one of the several instruments being developed under Gavi's Day Zero Financing Facility for Pandemics(DZF) which aims to provide up to US$2.5 billion that will be used to support rapid vaccine response during major public health emergencies ,to try and achieve more equitable outcomes for the countries that Gavi ,the Vaccine Alliance support
"The problem we are trying to solve are these months of delay between Day Zero in the next pandemic and money being available to spend" said the organisation's Head of Development Finance Charles Bleehen.
According to a recent simulation by the G20 Joint Health Financing Task force having this sort of contingent plan within the first few weeks of another COVID 19 style pandemic can reduce deaths by up to 74% and economic costs by 95% .
Meanwhile Gavi ,the Vaccine Alliance in collaboration with partners has announced support for human rabies vaccines for post exposure prophylaxis as part of the routine immunisation.
This development complements the ongoing global efforts of the Zero by 30 campaign led by the United Against Rabies Forum including the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) ,the World Health Organisation(WHO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) with the goal of eliminating all dog-mediated human rabies by 2030.
"Gavi's aim with this program is to contribute to the global rabies control effort and save lives by ensuring that human rabies vaccines are available to those that are in need of them including those from marginalised and vulnerable communities who are in many cases left out" added Gavi Chief Programme Officer Aurelia Nguyen.
WHO Assistant Director -General for Universal Health Coverage , Communicable and Non-communicable Diseases Dr Salomon said this commitment from Gavi is crucial and will expedite efforts to halt fatalities caused by dog-mediated rabies.
"WHO will provide technical assistance to countries ,not only to support their funding applications to Gavi but to draw up comprehensive plans of action that can deliver the real progress towards Zero by 30 goal."
Chair of the United Against Rabies Forum Professor Lucille Blumberg applauded Gavi's investment and described it as huge and underpins a key pillar of the global strategy to stop people from getting infected by this terrible disease.
In more than 150 countries where dog rabies is a serious public health problem rabies vaccines in public health systems are often limited especially in marginalised communities and where it is available it will be in private health facilities where the cost is high and at times it imposes a catastrophic financial burden on families and communities.
Rabies is a viral disease that causes severe inflammation of the brain in 99% of the cases and it is transmitted to humans by a rabid dog and once the virus reaches the central nervous system and an infected person shows clinical symptoms,rabies infection is 100% fatal.
Gavi ,the Vaccine Alliance is a public -private partnership that helps vaccinate more than half of the world's children against some of the world's deadliest diseases. Since its inception in 2000, Gavi has helped to immunise over 1 billion children ,prevented more than 17.3 million future deaths thereby helping to halve child mortality in 78 lower-income countries.It also plays a key role in improving global health security by supporting health systems as well as funding Ebola, Cholera,Meningococcal and Yellow Fever .
Comments