The high cost of cutting funding for vaccines

Vaccines are a vital tool that save millions of lives every year. Concerningly, the US government wants to cut funding for a key organisation that saves lives around the world through immunisation. And amid vaccine safety debates, the world is seeing rising measles cases.

- Bjorn Lomborg

The politics of the Covid pandemic saw growing rejection of vaccines — and that shift has contributed to the Trump administration’s announcement to cut funding to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Gavi is estimated to have saved the lives of 17 million children over the last 25 years. The loss of US support would mean that 75 million children will miss their routine vaccinations in the next five years, and more than 1.2 million children could die as a result, according to the organisation.

The vast number of children dying from infectious diseases today live in poorer countries, but we forget that less than two centuries ago, even rich countries lived in an era of pestilence. Then, infectious diseases caused almost half of annual American and British deaths, whereas today they cause only about 3% of all deaths in America. Yet, infectious diseases still kill over 3 million children in the world’s poorer regions. We need to bring everyone together on uncontroversial, lifesaving childhood vaccines like those for mumps and measles. Not only do governments need to maintain current spending, but they need to increase it. Doing so offers an opportunity to drive huge advances in global development for a very small investment — something that should be attractive to everyone, regardless of their politics.