Gavi really matters. We have 25 years of receipts to prove it
The Vaccine Alliance’s replenishment summit will take place in Brussels on Wednesday. By evening, we should know whether the world has stepped up to commit the US$ 9 billion Gavi needs to deliver the next five years’ worth of life-saving vaccines.
- 23 June 2025
- 4 min read
- by James Fulker , Maya Prabhu
On Wednesday, Gavi will ask the world for US$ 9 billion to fund its next five years. That sounds like a whole lot of money until you consider what it will buy. We say it all the time because it’s true: vaccination is the best investment going in health.
And yes, finance jargon is a chilly dialect for describing what amounts, finally, to saving babies (and kids and teenagers and, often enough, adults) from unnecessary illness and death, and saving the people who love them from still-too-common bewildering grief. But it’s also not lost on us that the character of international aid is changing, and that funding for global health is contracting. Under these conditions, we count ourselves lucky that our case is easy to make both by numbers, and in terms of the bottom line.
That's partly because it’s what vaccines do – think ounce of prevention, pound of cure. But it’s also because Gavi, by design and constitution, is a specialised, highly pragmatic and demonstrably effective tool.
Even before the year 2000, when Gavi began its existence in a basement mailroom beneath UNICEF in Geneva, there were vaccines and vaccine manufacturers, and there were immunisation programmes, and there was donor funding. But there were so many missed opportunities in getting those things to intersect efficiently that the money wasn’t stretching far enough, that not enough vaccines were available, and in the end, not enough children were getting protected. Gavi has changed that.
There are lots of official, impeccably audited and impressive metrics that quantify the Vaccine Alliance’s impact. Here’s our own, somewhat looser insight. Editing stories for VaccinesWork means we spend a lot of time looking up two specific sets of stats: immunisation coverage rates and under-five mortality rates.
We’d need to be pretty obtuse not to have noticed two things by now: firstly, that those two graph-lines – vaccine coverage and child mortality – like to travel in opposite directions. Secondly, in the lower-income countries that Gavi supports, they very often kink in the right direction at right around the year 2000.
That’s not a coincidence – it’s a symptom of a sound decision the world has been making, collectively, for 25 years. Here’s to five more years of doing the smart thing, which, in this case, is also the good thing.
The Editors
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Calculating the future: how Gavi figures out how many lives vaccines have saved
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From Advance Market Commitments to Day Zero Financing: an A-to-Z of Gavi’s financial tools
Through innovative financing, Gavi seeks to deliver “more money for health, and more health for the money”.
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Every five years, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance conducts a detailed horizon scan to decide which new and under-used vaccines could most help the countries it supports. Here’s how the process works.
Also read: Projected impact of climate change to inform which new vaccines receive Gavi support
How Gavi’s pioneering co-financing model ensures sustainable vaccine programmes
Countries are moving toward greater financial ownership, soon contributing 25% of the cost of Gavi-supported vaccine programmes. VaccinesWork spoke to Emmanuel Bor, Gavi’s Director A.I. of Immunisation Financing and Sustainability, to understand how important co-financing has been.
Also read: Gavi-supported countries make strides towards vaccine sovereignty
Everything you need to know about global emergency vaccine stockpiles
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Learn more about the vaccine stockpiles on the VaccinesWork Guide.
Kenya's protected generation: 25 years of Gavi impact
Twenty-five years of Gavi support are a lifetime for young mum Elizabeth Khayumbi and nurse Mercy Daisy Handa, both living in a future underwritten by immunisation.
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