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GAVI and its role in achieving the Millennium Development Goals

GAVI/09/Olivier Asselin

Learn more about GAVI's efforts towards achieving the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)


The power of vaccines combined with a range of investments to strengthen systems that deliver immunisation and other services to women and children, provide health benefits which accrue to all the MDGs.

Please click on any of the eight MDGs listed below to find out more about how GAVI is contributing to their realisation:

  1. END POVERTY AND HUNGER
  2. ACHIEVE UNIVERSAL PRIMARY EDUCATION
  3. PROMOTE GENDER EQUALITY AND EMPOWER WOMEN
  4. REDUCE CHILD MORTALITY
  5. IMPROVE MATERNAL HEALTH
  6. COMBAT HIV/AIDS, MALARIA AND OTHER DISEASES
  7. ENSURE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
  8. DEVELOP A GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP FOR DEVELOPMENT


1. END POVERTY AND HUNGER

Vaccines protect children from death and disability, enabling families to break out of a cycle of poverty and ill health

  • Healthy children free families from the financial burden of medical care, allowing them to spend more on food and education.
  • GAVI supports countries with a Gross National Income of less than US$ 1,000 per person, per year.


2. ACHIEVE UNIVERSAL PRIMARY EDUCATION

    Healthy, immunised children are better able to attend school and learn

  • Protecting children from illness and disability enables them to attend school more regularly.
  • Vaccination improves their cognitive development, physical strength and educational achievements.


3. PROMOTE GENDER EQUALITY AND EMPOWER WOMEN

Vaccines are an equitable public health intervention

  • Overall, girls and boys have the same access to life-saving vaccines.
  • Healthy children free women’s time for other activities.


4. REDUCE CHILD MORTALITY

Vaccines have helped reduce child deaths by 30% since 1990

  • GAVI and its partners have contributed to the remarkable reduction in child mortality through improving access to immunisation in the world’s poorest countries.
  • Vaccines prevent over 2.5 million child deaths each year.
  • 79% of children in developing countries are now being reached by national immunisation programmes compared with 66% in 2000.
  • Pneumonia and diarrhoea kill three million children each year. Funding pneumococcal and rotavirus diarrhoeal vaccines against these leading child killers could prevent another one million children from dying every year.

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5. IMPROVE MATERNAL HEALTH

Vaccine's benefit women's health

  • GAVI-supported maternal and neonatal tetanus vaccines protect newborns and their mothers against death.
  • Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines have the potential to dramatically improve women’s health. 270,000 women die each year from cervical cancer, most in developing countries where it is the leading cancer killer of women. HPV vaccines can avert 70% of cervical cancer deaths. GAVI Alliance has prioritised support for HPV vaccines, along with rubella vaccines which help to protect children from life-long disability and mothers from stillbirths and miscarriages.


6. COMBAT HIV/AIDS, MALARIA AND OTHER DISEASES

Vaccinating HIV-positive adults and children can help to protect them from pneumonia, diarrhoea and other diseases

  • Vaccinating children also benefits the non-vaccinated by reducing disease transmission within the community (herd immunity). This is especially important for HIV-positive people who are more vulnerable to pneumonia and other diseases.


7. ENSURE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Pneumonia and diarrhoea are the two biggest killers of children

  • Tackling them requires an integrated approach to pneumonia and diarrhoea control.
  • The introduction of new pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines can re-energise other aspects of pneumonia and diarrhoea control including safe drinking water and sanitation, thereby saving many more lives.


8. DEVELOP A GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP FOR DEVELOPMENT

GAVI Alliance is an innovative public-private partnership

  • Brings together key partners in immunisation to distribute new and underused vaccines to the world’s poorest countries.

  • Uses innovative financing mechanisms mobilising over US$ 4 billion in additional funds for health. Leverages long-term donor commitments on private capital markets to frontload funding.

  • Shapes markets reducing vaccine prices by pooling demand and attracting new manufacturers, including those from emerging economies, to encourage healthy competition.

  • Strengthens health systems reducing bottlenecks in delivering vaccines and improving maternal, newborn and child health services.

  • Maximises aid effectiveness channelling funds through national health plans and budgets, thus reducing transaction costs for countries.

  • Uses results-based financing supporting countries to increase immunisation coverage.

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