Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Africa Water, Sanitation Jan -Feb 2014 Vol.10 No1 | Page 38

Health
Yes we can: $7.5B Gavi goal reached in Berlin
By Musa Okwonga

winning is to sprint to the front of the pack early and stay
there, they structured the program so that most of the
truly rousing moments came before lunch.

Handwashing article receives the Elsevier Atlas
award

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates at the Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance pledging
conference in Berlin, Germany. Gates pledged $1.55 billion during the event. Photo
by: Gavi

They did it.
At the end of an afternoon of anxious anticipation in
Berlin, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance CEO Seth Berkley
announced that his organization had reached its
fundraising target of $7.5 billion.
To his elation — and, perhaps somewhere in there, to
his relief — he revealed that they had exceeded this goal
by $39 million, news that brought the room to its feet.
The news conference afterward also had an unmistakably
triumphant air, and understandably so, for this success was
by no means a sure thing.
In 2011, the last time Gavi had sought pledges on this
scale, they were looking for just under half this amount.
Then, it had asked for $3.85 billion, but four years later,
with the world’s economy further withered by the effects
of the financial crash, it was making a request that even
Berkley referred to as “ambitious.”

Elsevier, a world-leading
publisher and provider
of information solutions
for science, health, and
technology professionals
selected the Effect of a
behaviour-change intervention on handwashing with
soap in India (SuperAmma): a cluster-randomised
trial, The Lancet Global Health, March 2014 article to receive
the Elsevier Atlas award.
Each month a single Atlas article is selected from
published research from across Elsevier’s 1,800 journals
by an external advisory board made up of individuals
from NGOs including the following organizations, among
several others:
• Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)
• Health Informational for all – HIFA 2015
• International Training and Outreach Center in
Africa (ITOCA)
• TEDMED
• United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP)
• University of California, Berkeley (Centre for
Effective Global Action)
• Global Health Policy Institute
• United Nations University
• OXFAM
• Bioversity International

If Gavi had ever doubted the scale or importance of its
task, then there would have been no shortage of people
to remind them. As many of the delegates arrived at
the Berlin Conference Center, striding briskly through
the morning drizzle, they were greeted by a cluster of
protesters bearing an array of banners, urging them to
pledge generously. “World leaders, save 6 million lives
today!” they read, or variations of the same.

Atlas articles showcase research that can (or already has)
significantly impact people’s lives around the world and we
hope that bringing wider attention to this research will go
some way to ensuring its successful implementation.

These were dramatic words, but no less grand than the
aims of the day’s proceedings: to secure funds, as Bill
Gates would tell his audience, that could help halve
child mortality within the next 15 years. And so inside
the conference center, past security checks that you’d
more readily associate with an airport terminal, the
representatives of dozens of countries prepared their
promises.

Many mothers and newborns are dying because of a
lack of sanitation, safe water and hygiene while giving
birth, leading health experts have warned.

In hindsight, Gavi ran the day just right. A little like a
marathon runner who knows that his best chance of
38

Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • January - February 2015

Poor water and hygiene ‘kills mothers and
newborns’

They say the lack of such basic facilities is hindering the
success of other interventions to improve the health of
newborn babies.In some clinics in Tanzania pregnant
women are asked to bring their own water supplies.They’ve
called on governments and agencies to focus more on B