Mr. Henri de Raincourt, Minister responsible for Cooperation, will meet with Mr. Dagfinn Høybråten, Chair of the GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization)

Alliance Board on Wednesday, January 25, 2012.

This meeting will provide an opportunity to underline the progress achieved toward increasing access to vaccinations and the role that France intends to play with respect to improving the health of the poorest people.

The Minister responsible for Cooperation will reaffirm that maternal and child health is one of the priorities of French official development assistance. France is one of the main contributors to GAVI: €15 million between 2003 and 2006, and €1.3 billion from 2007 to 2026 through the International Finance Facility for Immunization (IFFIm), to which France is the second leading contributor. Furthermore, in 2011, it announced additional funding of €100 million between now and 2015 to support new programs.

GAVI is a public-private partnership launched on January 31, 2000, to help the 7 poorest countries (per capita gross national income of less than $1,500), at the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland). The governments, UNICEF, WHO, the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the vaccine industries, the public health institutions and non-governmental organizations pledged to work in partnership in order to protect all children in the poorest countries against the main vaccine-preventable diseases. Since its creation in 2000 it has therefore prevented the death of 5.4 million children under five.