Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance saves lives — cutting funding puts Nigerians at risk

BY AIGBOJE AIG-IMOUKHUEDE AND MICHAEL SHELDRICK

Here in Nigeria health workers like Furera Aliyu have seen firsthand how economic hardship affects vaccination efforts. After the pandemic, Aliyu met parents hesitant to vaccinate their children, not just because of misinformation, but because survival took priority over healthcare. With job losses, business closures, and declining national revenues, millions of Nigerian families struggled to meet basic needs, let alone prioritize vaccinations.

This stark reality underscores a critical lesson: epidemics are never just health crises, they are economic and social crises as well. In Nigeria, social distancing measures limited economic activity, forced small and medium-sized businesses to close, and led to widespread job losses. The drop in oil prices further reduced government revenues, making it even harder to reinforce an already fragile healthcare system. At the same time, disruptions in diaspora remittances cut off a vital financial lifeline for so many of our households. According to World Data Lab, between 2019 and 2020, about 12.6 million Nigerians fell into extreme poverty, largely due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For families like the one Aliyu encountered, these economic hardships made healthcare inaccessible. When parents must choose between feeding their children and seeking medical care, life-saving interventions like vaccinations often fall by the wayside. This is why the fight against polio and public health crises more broadly must be paired with policies that promote economic resilience. Strengthening healthcare systems is essential, but so is ensuring that families have the financial stability to access and trust these services. Without this dual approach, the cycle of vulnerability will persist, leaving millions at risk.

Government and business leaders must not forget to prioritize the protection of public health on the economic development agenda, particularly support for cost-effective health interventions like vaccines. Over the last 50 years, vaccines have saved a staggering 154 million lives around the world — that’s six lives saved every minute for five decades.

Our leaders have a critical opportunity this year to reinforce global public health and economic resilience, while ensuring that children in countries such as Nigeria receive the life-saving vaccines they need. They must fully fund Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance this year.

Since its founding in 2000, Gavi has helped to immunize more than 1.1 billion children in close partnership with 78 countries, saving nearly 19 million lives. Today, a child born in a Gavi-supported country is 70% less likely to die from a vaccine-preventable disease before their fifth birthday.

Gavi is about health equity and justice – it’s core mission is to deliver to the world’s most vulnerable children the same life-saving vaccines that are readily available to infants born in wealthier nations. This mission was challenged during the pandemic, with more than 67 million children missing out on one or more vaccines. This dramatically increased the risk of infectious outbreaks and threatened global public health goals — making this next Gavi replenishment more crucial than ever.

If public and private donors around the world unite to commit an additional $9 billion USD to Gavi, the organization can immunize another 500 million children and save nearly 9 million more lives by 2030- and close to a billion children by 2035.. This includes 50 million children receiving extra protection against malaria thanks to the first malaria vaccines now available, and 120 million girls protected against HPV, dealing a major blow to cervical cancer.

However, Gavi’s power is not only protecting individuals from deadly diseases — again, the economic impact of public health interventions, especially immunization, is significant. If fully funded over the next 5 years, Gavi will generate at least $100 billion USD in economic benefits for the countries it supports, with every dollar of investment yielding $54 USD in returns.

Gavi is a partnership – by  design it incentivizes countries to contribute increasingly more towards their national immunization needs in relation to their economic development.

This aspect of Gavi’s model was on full display last fall when we joined government, business, and philanthropic leaders across Africa in Abidjan for the first-ever Economic Development Assembly, where. Gavi announced that African countries had paid over $100 million USD in co-financing in 2024. Gavi projects that developing countries will contribute $4 billion USD in financing and co-financing by 2030.

As we mark five years since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it must be emphasized that a fully funded Gavi will stand ready to respond to at least 150 potential outbreaks to strengthen global health security and protect against the threat of future pandemics. In other words, investments in Gavi will not only help children in need, they will pay dividends for all of us to protect economies everywhere — a true win-win for the world.

But with so much geopolitical uncertainty and cuts to international assistance, Gavi’s replenishment efforts are being challenged like never before. That is why we need all public and private donors to step up and make the commitments needed to leave no child unprotected — and leave no economy at undue risk of the devastating effects of epidemics. Nigeria has benefitted from the existence of GAVI – now its time for us to raise our voices to protect it.