Finance ministers from France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK Friday launched a long-awaited International Finance Facility for Immunization (IFFIM) in London.
The innovative fund will provide an extra 4 billion US dollar (24 milliarder DKR) for the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunization (GAVI), an alliance between the public and private sector, in the next decade, reports the World Bank press review.
The countries will borrow the money on capital markets and pay it back from aid budgets in an approach seen by some as a way of releasing aid money early. The extra resources will be used to finance immunization and buy vaccines for the developing world to tackle diseases such as polio and hepatitis B.
The UK has pledged 35 percent of the money, some 130 million US dollar a year, with France contributing 25 percent.
The World Health Organization estimates this undertaking will save the lives of five million children over the next decade. The new funds would roughly double the resources of the Global Alliance. The alliances board has already approved ambitious programs for 2006 to expand measles coverage in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, as well as to help eradicate polio worldwide and increase the use of maternal and neonatal tetanus vaccines. These plans can go forward now that the new financing has been secured.
However, the United States has declined to join the vaccine plan. Bush administration officials said earlier this year that the long-term commitment to raise money through the bond market is not consistent with the annual appropriations process in Congress. The US provides 60 million to 70 million US dollar a year to the alliance.
The money will finance immunization schemes in 72 countries in an attempt to eradicate lethal diseases including polio, hepatitis B, measles, diphtheria, yellow fever and tetanus. Ten million children die every year from preventable diseases and 30 million go without immunization. Illnesses from such diseases make up more than half of all those in the poorest countries ” nine times the level in the richest nations.
The pact marks the first time rich nations have used pledges of increased aid to back government bonds as a means of financing a major development program. This so-called international finance facility is the brainchild of Gordon Brown, Britains chancellor of the exchequer (finansminister).
The money will be used to purchase vaccines and bicycles to transport them, as well as to rehabilitate health clinics and pay health workers to do the immunizing in remote areas. Leaders of the alliance hope the vaccine plan will strengthen basic health services in poor countries, not just immunization efforts.
Gordon Brown, and Graca Machel, the chair of the Vaccine Fund Board, meanwhile write in an opinion piece in The Independent (UK) that by matching the power of medical advance with an innovative facility to front-load long-term finance, the IFFIM will enable Gavi to invest in the introduction of new and underused vaccines, including combination vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and the establishment of a post- eradiction polio stockpile.
It is not just the increased resources the IFFIM generates that makes this possible, but the way in which they are provided. First, it will make additional resources available sooner. By advancing aid now the facility will allow investment to strengthen immunization systems today ” when it is most needed. Second, by delivering predictable and stable aid, IFFIM provides the certainty manufacturers need to invest in new and under-used vaccines and accelerate the reduction in vaccine prices.
Backing this up is new work led by Italy’s Finance Minister, Domenico Siniscalco, to investigate creative ways of incentivizing research to find and produce vaccines.
Critics fear the scheme, first championed by Gordon Brown in 2003, is a “buy now, pay later” project. Peter Hardstaff, from the World Development Movement, said he wanted to increase funds for immunization but did not approve of the details of the scheme.
– Our concern is that because the IFF is a way of borrowing money from international financial markets, in years to come we are going to end up using aid money to pay off the interest to financiers rather than helping the poor, he said.
Hardstaff argued it would be better for the schemes to be funded from ordinary government revenue.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
