Ten years of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation

The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), now known as the GAVI Alliance, was created in 2000 to increase the availability and use of immunisation in poor countries. GAVI’s launch, which was made possible by a start-up grant of $750m (£486m; €550m) from the Gates Foundation, was part of broader efforts by world leaders to strengthen public health action across the globe in the late 1990s. Nine million children die in the developing world annually, two million from diseases for which vaccines are available. Over the past decade, GAVI has immunised 256 million children and, in doing so, has averted five million deaths.1

For many, the measurable achievements of GAVI make it the flagship among a flood of global public-private partnerships in health. The alliance has achieved this by playing a “market shaping role”—for example, by consolidating populations into larger markets and exerting downward pressure on prices (as it did for hepatitis B and diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccines) through its purchasing power. It has also politicised vaccines, in …