By Caribbean News Global 
OTTAWA, Canada – Karina Gould, minister of international development announced new support to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s end-game strategy, toward ensuring routine immunizations for hundreds of million children around the world.
Amid the global pandemic, it is more important than ever to acknowledge that vaccines and routine immunizations save millions of lives each year. Canada remains committed to ensuring access to essential vaccinations, leading efforts to advance gender equality and reducing the burden of infectious diseases.
The minister made this announcement at the launch of the Group of Friends of Solidarity for Global Health Security virtual meeting, which she co-hosted alongside her counterparts from Denmark, Qatar, the Republic of Korea and Sierra Leone.
This replenishment funding ensures that Gavi is able to build on its incredible reach with vaccinations by identifying opportunities for advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights programming, in partnership with communities and local organizations. Predictable financing will allow Gavi to save between seven million and eight million lives.
Gavi is currently helping low-income countries respond to COVID-19 outbreaks, including making additional funding available for strengthening health systems. When a COVID-19 vaccine is developed, Gavi will be well-positioned to ensure the scale-up of manufacturing, access, and allocation, along with timely delivery, of new vaccines in vulnerable countries.
At the same time, front line workers in many countries are using networks established by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to focus on case detection, tracing, testing, and data management.
Global efforts to eradicate polio have already prevented 18 million cases of paralysis, and the wild poliovirus has been eliminated from 99.9 percent of the world’s regions. This is one of the great global health success stories of the last 30 years, and Canada is proud to have been a partner every step of the way—especially now, with victory and eradication so close.
Canada is pledging $600 million to the third replenishment of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and committing $47.5 million annually over four years to support the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s end-game strategy.
The funding investments will help the World Health Organization, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Gavi and other partners support the most vulnerable countries by working to ensure that routine immunization continues, that we do not lose the gains we have made in global health and that we prevent a resurgence of polio and other communicable diseases for which we have vaccines.
“As a global community, we must work to ensure that those most vulnerable, including women and children, have access to vaccinations to keep them healthy wherever they live. COVID-19 has demonstrated that viruses do not know borders. Our health here in Canada depends on the health of everyone, everywhere. Together, we must build a more resilient planet,” said minister Gould.
