NAIROBI: The head of a global vaccine organisation told AFP on Friday that aid cuts by the United States and other donors have forced it to slash its malaria programme in Africa, threatening tens of thousands of children’s lives.<\/p>\n
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, brings together government and private donors to help developing countries acquire jabs for key diseases at affordable prices.<\/p>\n
Last year, the United States pulled support worth $1.58 billion, with its vaccine-sceptic health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr claiming without evidence that there were safety concerns.<\/p>\n
“Our malaria programme has taken the heaviest cuts,” Gavi CEO Sania Nishtar told AFP in an interview from Rwanda.<\/p>\n
Gavi has been supporting the rollout of the malaria vaccine, approved in 2021, in 25 countries across Africa, where the disease claims some 600,000 lives a year, mostly children.<\/p>\n
The goal of reaching 85 percent coverage in the targeted countries by 2030 has been reduced to 70 percent, she said.<\/p>\n
Gavi had projected the rollout would prevent 180,000 deaths, and while final spending choices still rest with African governments, the impact of the cuts “will likely be tens of thousands of children’s lives lost”, said Nishtar.<\/p>\n
“This is hugely disappointing,” she added.<\/p>\n
“If you’ve ever seen a child with malaria convulsions in a hospital, you know what this means. It’s a horrible sight.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NAIROBI: The head of a global vaccine organisation told AFP on Friday that aid cuts by the United States and other donors have forced it to slash its malaria programme in Africa, threatening tens of thousands of children’s lives. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, brings together government and private donors to help developing countries acquire jabs …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":96822,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96824,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96807\/revisions\/96824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}