Vaccine funding: UK to give additional £814m

David Cameron says aid will help to save 1.4m lives from preventable conditions such as pneumonia and diarrhoea Britain will donate an additional £814m to vaccinate more than 80 million children, helping to save an estimated 1.4m lives from common conditions such as pneumonia and diarrhoea, the prime minister, David Cameron, has announced. “Britain will play its full part,” he told the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi) conference in London, where politicians, charities, private companies and philanthropists including Bill Gates of Microsoft are gathering to plan funding the protection of children in countries too poor to pay for vaccination. Richer countries are being asked to give an extra £2.3bn by 2015. Gates, who is jointly hosting the conference with Cameron, is pledging $1bn (£600m) towards the campaign. Cameron said: “In addition to our existing support for Gavi, we will provide £814 million of new funding up to 2015. This will help vaccinate over 80 million children and save 1.4 million lives.” “That is one child vaccinated every two seconds for five years. It is one child’s life saved every two minutes. That is what the money that the British taxpayer is putting in will give.” He said the idea of children dying of preventable conditions such as pneumonia and diarrhoea should be “unthinkable” in 2011. “To those who say fine but we should put off seeing through those promises to another day because right now we can’t afford to help: I say – we can’t afford to wait.” The UK is already committed to giving £2bn over the next 30 years. In an article in the Observer Cameron defended the decision against backbench Tory unease about increasing overseas aid at a time of such sharp domestic cuts. It was a controversial decision, he said, but it was right both morally and in the national interest to invest in countries “before they become broken”, preventing spending far more on the problems that could result. Health experts estimate that three times as many children under five die from the conditions as from malaria and HIV/Aids combined. Vaccines and immunisation Health Bill Gates David Cameron Aid London guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 13, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.