At its annual board meeting in Vietnam, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) adopted a set of new policies that will determine which countries will be eligible for future financing, based on a set of studies carried out by R4D at GAVI’s request over much of 2009.

R4D project coordinator Helen Saxenian attended the Board meeting in Hanoi and assisted the GAVI policy leadership in presenting the results of the analytical modeling studies, which were conducted by the R4D team including Paul Wilson, Angeline Nanni, Amrita Palriwala, Kira Thorien, and Aarthi Rao.

Specific recommendations adopted by the Board, which will impact how GAVI allocates as much as $10 billion or more for expanded childhood vaccination over the coming decade, include:

1. A new eligibility threshold based on gross national income per capita

2. A transparent process for annually updating the threshold

3. A policy designed to ensure the long-term sustainability of immunization programs for countries that “graduate” from GAVI because they are rich enough to pay for vaccines with their own resources

4. A change in the criteria for deciding which countries can access the “New Vaccine Support” window that pays for expensive new vaccinations against pneumonia, rotavirus diarrhea, and other diseases

5. Further exploration of the rules GAVI should use to allocate funds in the event that proposals from eligible countries outweigh available resources

Immediately after the Board meeting, key aspects of the new GAVI policies and the R4D team’s technical work were presented to more than 400 participants at the GAVI Partners’ Forum. Click here to view the Forum Presentation.

More detailed information can be found in the Final Report from the Board meeting, and in the individual Board papers on Eligibility and Graduation.