More Than 5 Million Children Vaccinated in Africa and South America thanks to the Alliance for Child Vaccination

Vaccination saves lives, especially in countries where access to healthcare is still a challenge. More than five million children in particularly vulnerable areas of Africa and Latin America have been vaccinated since the launch, over ten years ago, of the Child Vaccination Programme, promoted by ”la Caixa”  in partnership with Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and in cooperation with the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).

Jaume Giró, CEO of ”la Caixa” Banking Foundation, and Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, today signed, for the twelfth consecutive year, the renewal of the agreement to continue the partnership, focusing its efforts on immunisation against pneumonia in Mozambique.

Since its creation in 2008, the Alliance has raised over 31 million euros and more than 5 million children have received the pentavalent and pneumococcal vaccines thanks to a fundraising initiative that is a pioneer in Europe. Through the Matching Fund formula, all donations received are multiplied by four. Under this 1 = 4 formula, ”la Caixa” adds one euro and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation another two to each euro donated.

The Alliance for Child Vaccination has reached a total of 10 countries in Africa and Latin America, including Bolivia, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mauritania, Nicaragua, Sudan and Tanzania. In recent years, moreover, the Alliance has focused particularly on Mozambique, providing the pneumococcal vaccine to combat pneumonia, the leading cause of child mortality in that country at present.