By Nina Joyce and Esther McHugh

"If a child is sick it cannot develop to harvest the potential that society has afforded. When grown-ups get sick they cannot work and both the family and the society suffer."

Gro Harlem Brundtland, director general of the World Health Organisation, will use Davos to start a campaign aimed at unlocking the concentric relationship between poverty and ill-health. She will be joined by Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates.

They will unveil the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization initiative (Gavi), a coalition of disparate international organisations, industrial partners and charities who have united in a crusade to vaccinate the world's poor and stem the flow of disease.

Bill Gates has already put $750m into the pot. And other members including the Rockefeller Foundation, will be adding more.

The alliance is "dedicated to encouraging the expanded availability and use of traditional and new vaccines in developing countries", according to Unicef.

Its principal strategy is to provide incentives to the pharmaceutical industry to develop vaccines. Under the scheme, the Global Fund for Children's Vaccine, an arm of Gavi, will provide a safety net for drug companies by agreeing to buy a pre-agreed number of doses at a guaranteed price thereby protecting the companies from making a loss on any new vaccinations.

The initiative has already found some support among pharmaceutical companies who want to see aid agencies working with the market in mind.

"In the last ten years a rapprochement of international public health and the private sector vaccine industry has resulted in not only a new partnership but the injection of real market dynamics in public health decision-making about vaccines," said Thomas Vernon, of Merck, one of Gavi's industrial partners.

Gavi's backers say their approach is cost-effective for all concerned, since donors would spend nothing until a vaccine had been produced.

But Gavi's remit is wider than just vaccination. It was also set up to explore the options for promoting immunisation research, the final frontier in eradicating global illness.

In November, the WHO established the Medicines for Malaria Venture, a company linking public and private sector scientists in the effort to capitalise on existing chemical knowledge to produce a vaccine for the disease.

And the European Commission, following the US and Japan, wants to carry out research into immunisation against "orphan diseases". Under the proposal the EU would reduce licensing requirements and authorisation fees for drugs firms producing vaccines for diseases which affect fewer than five in 10,000.

Immunisation is not the only method of fighting infections like malaria and tuberculosis, says Carol Bellamy, executive director of Unicef, but "it is the most cost-effective means of preventing disease. Not only are hospital and treatment costs avoided, but when combined with adequate nutrition, immunisation is the foundation of basic health."

If Gavi can successfully bring new vaccines onto the market and pay for their distribution, its impact could be immense.

"One can overproject the benefits from improved public health," said Mr Vernon. "But the observed linkage of decreased infant mortality and subsequent reduced birth rate strongly suggests long-term implications for a society economically more secure, and more able to be concerned about such issues as environmental health."

Join the discussion on Gavi by clicking below:

chat  online

Join the discussion


live from Davos 

e-ideas business


agenda 2000
US foreign policy

guide 

Plenary sessions


agenda 2000
Debt cancellation

timeline 

WEF's 30th birthday


profile 
Mikhail Kasyanov

agenda  2000

Global governance