London vaccination summit offers “unprecedented opportunity to save millions of lives”

The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) is holding a pledging conference in London on 13 June, hosted by Prime Minister David Cameron, in an attempt to raise $3.7bn (£2.26bn; €2.53bn) to scale up immunisation programmes between now and 2015.

Despite substantial progress made in reducing childhood mortality, the alliance says that nearly two million children die each year from diseases that could be prevented by vaccines. Most of these deaths occur in low income countries. Pneumonia and diarrhoea are the two leading killers, causing nearly 40% of all childhood deaths.

GAVI says the conference is an “unprecedented opportunity to save millions of lives” because, if fully funded, it will be able to immunise over 243 million children in the poorest countries with vaccines against Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), hepatitis …