Northumberland MP hails historic commitments to global vaccine access

Mrs Trevelyan was at the Global Vaccine Summit in her role as Secretary of State for International Development.

The event, hosted by the UK, raised $8.8billion from 32 donor governments and 12 foundations, corporations and organisations.

The funding will help immunise 300 million more children in the world’s poorest countries against diseases like measles, polio and diphtheria by the end of 2025.

It will also support health systems to withstand the impact of coronavirus and maintain the infrastructure necessary to roll out a future COVID-19 vaccine on a global scale.

Mrs Trevelyan said: “As the world battles against coronavirus, today’s UK-hosted Global Vaccine Summit has been a superb example of what we can achieve when we all take action together.

“We know vaccines work, and I’m incredibly proud that we’ve exceeded Gavi’s pledging target to help protect 300 million more children from deadly illnesses through routine immunisation. This will help stop the spread of infection around the world, now, and in the future.”

Gavi, the World Health Organisation and UNICEF have warned that 80 million children under the age of one are at risk of disease due to disruptions to vital immunisation programmes because of coronavirus.

The UK remains the Vaccine Alliance’s largest donor, pledging the equivalent of £330 million per year over the next five years.

Other top donors include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Norway, Germany and the United States.

Eight countries made their first ever pledge to Gavi, including Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Finland, Greece, New Zealand, Portugal and Uganda.

The world’s biggest vaccine manufacturers also committed to continue supplying the billions of doses needed to continue increasing vaccine coverage across Africa and Asia.

The Vaccine Alliance is one of the world’s largest and most successful public-private partnerships, and the wider private sector continued to show support for its mission with the announcement of more than US$ 70 million of new pledges and partnerships, bringing new technology, networks and expertise to help solve some of global health’s most intractable problems.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

In order for us to continue to provide high quality and trusted local news on this free-to-read site, I am asking you to also please purchase a copy of our newspaper.

Our journalists are highly trained and our content is independently regulated by IPSO to some of the most rigorous standards in the world. But being your eyes and ears comes at a price. So we need your support more than ever to buy our newspapers during this crisis.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers - and consequently the advertising that we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news and information by buying a copy of our newspaper.

Thank you