Four Important Vaccines, Now Accessible Where They’re Needed Most

Lower-income countries will have access to four impactful vaccines, including a preventive Ebola one, thus protecting more people against more diseases more quickly.

“Gavi’s ability as an Alliance to protect health and save lives hinges on its ability to ensure vaccines are accessible, as quickly as possible, to those who need them the most,” explains Dr Sania Nishtar, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. In one decade, we have been able to progress from having no approved vaccines during a deadly Ebola outbreak to having a global stockpile that has helped cut down cases and deaths – and now vaccines are even used preventively to protect those at highest risk.”

Apart from the preventive Ebola vaccine, Gavi is introducing the human rabies vaccine for post-exposure prophylaxis, the multivalent meningococcal conjugate, and the hepatitis B birth dose. Preventive Ebola vaccination is set to become the norm in the highest-risk countries, thanks to a decision by the World Health Organization’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization. The new multivalent meningococcal conjugate vaccine, which protects against all five main serogroups (A, C, W, X, Y) of meningococcal meningitis, received WHO prequalification, and the MenFive® vaccine is already used in campaigns aiming to protect more than 5 million people suffering from meningococcus serogroups C and W outbreaks in Nigeria and Niger. The human rabies vaccine for post-exposure prophylaxis is now available in more than 150 countries, mainly in Africa and Asia, where rabies is a serious public health problem. The hepatitis B birth dose vaccine has also been added to Gavi’s portfolio. It is now delivered to children as part of the primary series of vaccinations.