Friday 15 March 2013
The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) recently signed a memorandum of understanding in Jeddah with the GAVI Alliance to help save children's lives by accelerating the introduction of life-saving vaccines in IDB member countries. The MoU signed by Ahmad Mohamed Ali, president of the IDB Group, and Seth Berkley, CEO of GAVI will allow IDB to work closely with GAVI to help secure sufficient funds for immunization. GAVI plans to vaccinate more than 400 million children by 2020 in at least 29 member countries, with the objective of preventing 3.2 million deaths.
"We are joining hands with the IDB to accelerate the introduction of life-saving vaccines in IDB member countries and ensure that children have a healthy start in life," said Berkley, adding: "We also aim to increase the uptake of new and underused vaccines in these countries and hopefully generate new sources of funding." Ali said that promoting health is among the major strategic thrusts of the Vision 1440H (2020) of the IDB Group and that it was happy to enter into a cooperation agreement with GAVI to save the lives of millions of children in member countries, thereby playing a major role against child mortality.
With support from the IDB, GAVI expects to roll out vaccines against two of the biggest killers of children in developing countries -- diarrhea and pneumonia -- as well as new and underused vaccines, including human papillomavirus (HPV) against cervical cancer, Japanese encephalitis, typhoid and rubella.
© Arab News 2013
