Gulf donors have committed more than $39 million to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, with significant contributions from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman.

Saudi Arabia has announced a $25 million pledge, Qatar has committed $10 million and Oman announced a $3 million commitment to the vaccine fund.

Meanwhile, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed’s Foundation added another $1 million, while the efforts of the Kuwait Youth Contribute Committee raised $160,000 for life-saving vaccines.

Gavi has successfully raised $7.5 billion to fund the delivery of life saving vaccines to hundreds of millions of children living in the world’s poorest countries at the Gavi Replenishment Conference, hosted in Berlin by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.  

In response to these pledges from new donors, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said: “It’s great to see the new donors of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman joining the global movement to support Gavi in its efforts to reach millions of children with life-saving vaccines.”

“We are proud to be partnering with these countries and other notable organisations in the GCC whose new contributions will help accelerate Gavi’s impact and get more vaccines to children who need them,” he said.

As part of this replenishment, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation committed $1.55 billion to Gavi, including a pledge to match the commitments made by Gulf donors.  

Gavi is a public-private partnership committed to saving children’s lives and protecting people’s health by increasing access to immunisation in poor countries. To date, it has reached half a billion children with immunizations, and saved more than 7 million lives. - TradeArabia News Service