Gavi at 25: Our ambition is greater than ever

Over its 25 years, Gavi has been pivotal in improving global health Image: REUTERS/Kham
- Over its 25 years, Gavi – the Vaccine Alliance – has played a pivotal role in improving global health by vaccinating over one billion children in low-income countries.
- Gavi aims to vaccinate at least 500 million children between 2026 and 2030, potentially saving over 8 million lives and generating $100 billion in economic benefits.
- Gavi plans to expand its equitable immunization programmes, building resilience against future pandemics and health crises.
People sometimes ask me, as CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, what our mission of equitable access to immunization means to me personally. And as Gavi celebrates its 25th year of fighting for vaccine equity, it is a question I often return to.
Almost all of us feel a visceral sense of injustice at the prospect of a child being denied access to a life-saving vaccine because of where they are born or whether their family can pay.
However, for many of us who grew up in a lower-income country, that sense of injustice is often born from deep personal experience.
Over the past quarter of a century, perhaps Gavi’s greatest achievement in vaccinating an entire generation of children in lower-income countries has been sparing more than one billion children from that injustice.
Growing up in Pakistan, I saw the evidence of vaccine-preventable diseases everywhere I looked. In the faces of people who still bore the scars of smallpox. In the suffering of those paralyzed by polio.
Later, as a physician, I saw the pain and trauma that preventable infectious diseases such as pneumonia give individuals and families and the damage they do to health systems and societies.
Against all this preventable mortality and morbidity, Gavi has been a countervailing force for a quarter of a century.
Increasing access to immunization
In that time, Gavi-supported vaccines have spared more than 18 million families the pain of losing a child.
As a public-private partnership, Gavi has shaped markets, growing the number of manufacturers supplying Gavi-supported vaccines worldwide and lowering the price of doses at the same time.
The result of this relentless drive for equity can be amply illustrated by the key indicator of the DTP3 vaccine, which protects children against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.
Coverage of this vaccine stood at 80% in Gavi-supported countries in 2023, a vast improvement on the 47% coverage in low-income countries in 2000 and just 4% below the global average.
All of this, remarkably, has been achieved while strengthening the long-term sustainability of national immunization programmes.
Nineteen countries, or almost a quarter of the low-income countries that were originally eligible for Gavi support, have now graduated to fully funding their vaccine programmes as their economies have grown and their health systems have become stronger.
Some, such as Indonesia, are now Gavi donors. And in 2024, Gavi-supported countries made record contributions to the costs of their vaccine programmes as they took their own path towards self-sufficiency in immunization.
Equitable access to immunization is about protecting people and communities. Ultimately, however, it is about protecting the world.
”Matching the scale of challenge
Twenty-five years since Gavi launched at the World Economic Forum, we can reflect on these achievements. But we must not forget there is so much more work to do.
There are still 10s of millions of children who do not receive a single dose of any vaccine. And as conflict, displacement, and vulnerability continue to spread, we face the prospect that more “zero-dose” children will be deprived of a fair start in life.
There are still many millions of girls facing the spectre of cervical cancer later in life because they don’t have access to the HPV vaccine.
Every day, we see the effects of a changing climate that puts more communities at risk of water-borne and vector-borne diseases.
We have to more than match the scale of the challenges ahead with the extent of our ambition. And that is exactly what we plan to do as we seek to raise at least $9 billion this year from our donors to reach more children with vaccines against more diseases faster than ever.
Between 2026 and 2030, our goal is to vaccinate at least 500 million children. If we can hit that goal, we could save more than 8 million lives and unlock at least $100 billion in broader economic benefits.
The vaccines we now have at our disposal have truly historic potential.
They have brought us to the dawn of a new era of malaria control that could finally turn the tide against one of humanity’s oldest adversaries.
Transformational power of vaccination
Last year, I became a grandmother for the first time and there is a realistic prospect that my grandchild belongs to a generation that can grow up free of the threat of cervical cancer, primarily due to the HPV vaccine’s potential to prevent most cases.
Equitable access to immunization is about protecting people and communities. Ultimately, however, it is about protecting the world.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic is behind us, there are regular reminders that the next pandemic threat could be just around the corner.
That is why we are expanding our vaccine programmes to prevent outbreak-prone diseases at their source and planning to make our largest-ever investment in vaccine stockpiles against Ebola, cholera, yellow fever and mpox.
We will also continue to contribute to creating a more coherent and equitable global architecture for health emergency preparedness and response, building on the success of our First Response Fund and unleashing untapped potential through our African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator.
Our ambition is clear. We have the strategy, 25 years of impact and learning, and the demand and commitment from the countries we support and the families and communities who see the transformational power of immunization.
In March, at a summit hosted by the European Union and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – attended by heads of state from donor and partner countries as well as leaders from the private sector and civil society – we will seek to match our ambition with the means and political commitment to make it a reality.
It is a historic opportunity as we march towards 2030 to build a safer, healthier and more prosperous world for all.
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