GAVI Alliance

By the late 1990s, the progress of international immunisation programmes was stalling. Nearly 30 million children in developing countries were not fully immunised against deadly diseases, and many others went without any immunisation at all.

At the heart of the challenge was an acute market failure; powerful new vaccines were becoming available, but lower-income countries simply could not afford most vaccines.

In response, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a group of founding partners brought to life an elegant solution to encourage manufacturers to lower vaccine prices for the poorest countries in return for long-term, high-volume and predictable demand from those countries.

In 2000, that breakthrough idea became the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation – today Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.