The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, yesterday inaugurated the Global Vaccine Impact Conference, organized by the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) at the Ministry’s headquarters and which assesses the state of global vaccination and will set goals for the coming years.
“Spain considers Global Health as a priority to achieve human development and the well-being of our societies,” said the Minister during his inaugural speech at the Conference, which is held every five years and which in its 2023 edition is being organized for the first time by the Spanish Government and GAVI.
The Conference is meeting from yesterday until tomorrow, June 15, to analyze the progress made by this Alliance to guarantee access for the population of 57 low-income countries to vaccines that can contribute to reducing mortality. This edition in Madrid brings together 17 Ministers of Health and senior officials from GAVI partner countries. In total, the conference will be attended by around 300 participants, representing government, civil society, the private sector, Vaccine Alliance partners and other Global Health stakeholders. The conference is co-chaired by Professor José Manuel Barroso, Chair of the GAVI Board of Directors.
Conference sessions will focus on GAVI’s progress towards its global immunization goals, the importance of collaboration with the private sector, emerging immunization priorities such as HPV and malaria, and how the Alliance can help combat climate change.
The Global Vaccine Impact Conference is the first face-to-face conference on the state of global immunization since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. It featured a new report, Raising Generation ImmUnity, on progress since 2020 towards immunization goals, as well as a range of new statistics that point to a global recovery in routine immunization by 2022.
GAVI is a public-private partnership that helps vaccinate nearly half of the world’s children against some of the world’s deadliest diseases. The Vaccine Alliance brings together developing country and donor governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine industry, technical agencies, civil society, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and other private sector partners.
Since its inception in 2000, GAVI has helped immunize an entire generation – more than one billion children – and has helped avert more than 16.2 million child deaths, cutting them by more than half in 73 low-income countries. After two decades of progress, GAVI is now focused on protecting the next generation and especially the “zero-dose” children, i.e. those who have never been vaccinated.
Spain became a GAVI donor in 2006 and is one of GAVI’s original partners and a major donor to IFFIM (International Finance Facility for Immunization), with a total commitment of 290 million euros. According to the GAVI website, Spain “has played a crucial role in supporting vaccination during the pandemic as a donor of COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX dose delivery mechanism”.
