Cups to global funding for the United Kingdom vaccination would risk avoidable deaths for children, warn experts | Vaccines and immunization

Any reduction in the funding of the United Kingdom to a global vaccination group would damage the soft power and could make British diseases less resilient to infectious diseases, as well as causing avoidable deaths in children, vaccination and help experts have warned.

Scientists such as Sir Andrew Pollard, who led the development of the Oxford-Antrazeneca covid vaccine, said that a major reduction in the world alliance for vaccines and immunization (GAVI) could also make the United Kingdom less able to respond to a future pandemic.

Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has not yet established its future funding for Gavi, a public-private organization based in Geneva which has vaccinated more than a billion children in developing countries.

The United Kingdom has already been one of the main donors in Gavi, offering more than 2 billion pounds in the past four years. But with the British aid budget, going from 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3% and the emphasis moving towards bilateral aid, the wait is that there will be a major reduction during the expenditure examination on Wednesday.

Pollard, who heads the Oxford vaccine group, said that in addition to continuing to save lives in poor countries, there was a case interested in continuing with similar levels of support.

“It is a safer place, obviously, for people who are in situations where they could not have access these vaccines without the government’s support, but that also makes it a safe place for us, because it acts within the framework of the shield that we have against the spread of infectious diseases around the world,” he said.

A number of vaccines used by GAVI are from the United Kingdom, said Pollard, as a new vaccine for malaria co-developed by the University of Oxford, which meant that expertise and infrastructure were in place when Cavid went down.

“The covid vaccine was developed at the end of the years of funding, both sources of British government funding, Wellcoma Trust, as well as international donors who put teams of people working on vaccines here in Oxford so that we can then respond when a pandemic occurred,” he said.

“If we did not do this type of work, having the infrastructure and capacities in the United Kingdom, we would not have been able to have an impact so early in the pandemic against this virus.”

Dr. Sandy Douglas, senior vaccinologist at the Jenner Institute of the University of Oxford, who directed efforts to increase the production of the cocovid vaccine, said that Gavi was known as one of the most profitable of all help projects, with an estimate suggesting that the life of a child was saved for each £ 1,200.

“There are really no ways to spend money in the world that can save the life of a child for so little money, and make it evolve, so hundreds of thousands of lives, millions of lives are saved over time,” he said.

“The withdrawal or reduction in British funding in Gavi will lead to the preventable death of many children. The work played a leading role in Gavi’s establishment, and Gordon Brown designed the financing mechanism that helps it work. I think it’s something about workforce, among its greatest achievements since the NHS, probably. ”

Moazzam Malik, Managing Director of Save The Children Uk, who was previously Managing Director for Africa at FCDO, said that the United Kingdom was traditionally “a very active actor” in multilateral help efforts such as GAVI and the Global Fund, which focuses on HIV / AIDS, Tuberculosis and malaria.

Withdrawing from this would be noted internationally, he said: “People somehow appreciate this leadership. And if the United Kingdom decides to take a much more limited position, what the world would see of this is a feeling that the United Kingdom is falling. ”

Gavi statistics show that it has vaccinated more than 1.1 billion children in 78 countries in its 25 years of operation, preventing nearly 19 million dead

A The FCDO spokesman said Jenny Chapman, the international development minister and peer, had stated that “global health is a priority for this government and is a key question while we modernize our approach to international development.

“Although we did not start the size of future promises before announcing them, we continue to work with our partners, including Gavi, on this crucial question.”