MEDIA RELEASE
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McMullan
With funding from Australia and other countries, two major pharmaceutical firms will supply new potentially life-saving pneumonia vaccines to millions of children in the world's poorest countries.
Pneumonia is the biggest global killer of children under five–accounting for 1 in four deaths or some 800,000 children.
It is estimated the introduction of suitable and affordable vaccines against the disease could save approximately 900,000 lives by 2015 and up to seven million lives by 2030.
The agreement reached between the global health partnership, the GAVI Alliance, and pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Pfizer Inc. involves a long-term commitment to supply the vaccines, with distribution starting as early as 2010.
The GAVI Alliance is a global health partnership between the private and public sectors committed to saving children's lives and protecting people's health by increasing access to immunisation in low-income countries.
Australia is one of 12 bilateral donors to the GAVI Alliance and recently fulfilled its US$20 million pledge to GAVI over four years (2006 to 2009) and is currently considering further support.
Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance, Bob McMullan, said these agreements signal landmark progress by GAVI and its partners in helping reshape the vaccine market to meet the desperate need of people living in the world's poorest countries.
"GAVI's efforts are critical to achieving Millennium Development Goal 4 on child health, which calls for reducing childhood mortality by two thirds by 2015," Mr McMullan said.
"Our current and future contributions to GAVI will help countries tackle broader health system challenges such as training staff, purchasing essential drugs, and providing basic maternal and child health care services, as well as continuing support for immunisation programs," Mr McMullan said.
The GAVI Alliance was launched in 2000 as a partnership between multilateral organisations–such as UNICEF, WHO, the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation–and bilateral aid organisations, developing country governments, public health and research institutes, civil society, and vaccine manufacturers from industrialised and developing countries.