How should GAVI build on its success?

There are not many development organisations these days that can say they have raised the full amount of funding they need to meet their goals. But GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, is in that happy position only 10 years after it was created.

At GAVI’s first pledging conference in June this year, public and private donors pledged $4.3bn (£2.7bn; €3bn), bringing the alliance’s funds for 2011-15 to a total of $7.6bn. With that, the organisation says, it can achieve its aim of immunising more than 250 million of the world’s poorest children against life threatening diseases, thus preventing more than four million premature deaths by 2015.1

Geneva based GAVI, which brings together governments of developing and donor countries, UN agencies, the World Bank, major philanthropists, and the drug industry, has prevented more than five million deaths since it began work in 2000, according to its 2011 progress report.2

But can donors be sure that the money pledged will be spent in the best possible way? Could GAVI be vaccinating more children and saving even more lives if it did things differently?