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Profiles

Bill and Melinda Gates Children's Vaccine Program

The Bill and Melinda Gates Children's Vaccine Program (CVP) was an American funding vehicle focused on increasing the speed of development and distribution of vaccines to children worldwide. Named after Bill Gates and his then-wife Melinda Gates, CVP was administered by the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH).

History

The CVP was launched on December 2, 1998 with a five-year $100 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.[1]

Within its first year, the CVP had “fundamentally and profoundly altered the landscape of global public health,” according to then-Director Mark Kane. It served as a founding member of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI), and helped form the Global Fund for Children's Vaccines in 1999 through a $750 million grant, alongside the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and GAVI.

Several more significant grants were issued; the CVP gave the World Health Organization (WHO) $11.25 million for vaccine initiatives, $10 million to UNICEF for “global advocacy for immunization country-level immunization programs,” and $3.7 million to the World Bank to “support initiatives to include immunization programming in bank loans.”

The CVP collaborated with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to test the “field efficacy” of a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in The Gambia.

Organization

The CVP was a member of the Allied Vaccine Group alongside the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Parents of Kids with Infectious Diseases (PKID), Immunization Action Coalition (IAC), Vaccine Page and the National Network for Immunization Information.[2]

Most of the CVP's work was carried out through partners which included non-governmental organizations and national governments, particularly national Ministries of Health and Finance. Notable partners included:

  • Abt Associates
  • Africa Health
  • Association pour l'aide à la Médecine Préventive
  • Australian Aid
  • Australian International Health Institute
  • Child Health Dialogue
  • Hesperian Foundation
  • International Vaccine Institute
  • Japanese International Cooperating Agency
  • Media/Materials Clearinghouse at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs
  • Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)
  • UNICEF
  • United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
  • Vaccine Page
  • World Bank
  • World Health Organization (WHO)

  1. Kane, M. (2000, January). Year One In Review. Children’s Vaccine Program. https://web.archive.org/web/20000903064454/http://www.childrensvaccine.org/files/CVP-Year-One.pdf ↩︎

  2. Members. Allied Vaccine Group. Retrieved February 6, 2001, from https://web.archive.org/web/20010206034519/http://vaccine.org/members.htm ↩︎