$200m in GAVI funding for rotavirus and pneumococcal vaccines

Our hometown newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, reports today on the $200 million pledge made late last week by GAVI to support vaccination against rotavirus and pneumococcus in the developing world. Here's the GAVI press release about the announcement.

The Inquirer story quotes GAVI's estimates of the potential worldwide benefit of each vaccine in the coming years: 370,000 deaths and 14 million hospitalizations due to rotavirus could be prevented by 2015, as could 447,000 deaths attributable to pneumococcus.

The Inquirer story explains:

"GAVI said it would coordinate with the World Health Organization and UNICEF to acquire and distribute vaccines first in 'countries where the vaccines have shown efficacy. As new and more effective vaccines come on the market, and as political support grows for introducing them in other GAVI countries, we will scale up to meet demand.'"