The Gavi vaccine alliance’s chief said on Thursday that any cut in US funding risks causing more than a million deaths, following a report that Washington is set to back out.
The decision was included in a 281-page spreadsheet that the severely downsized United States Agency for International Development (USAID) sent to Congress on Monday night.
The document details which grants the agency intends to continue and which it will terminate, according to The New York Times, which obtained a copy.
“We have not received a termination notice from the US government and are engaging with the White House and Congress with a view to securing $300 million approved by Congress for our 2025 activities and longer-term funding for Gavi,” the global vaccine organisation’s chief executive Sania Nishtar told AFP by email.
“A cut in Gavi’s funding from the US would have a disastrous impact on global health security, potentially resulting in over a million deaths from preventable diseases and endangering lives everywhere from dangerous disease outbreaks.”
Gavi says it helps vaccinate more than half the world’s children against deadly and debilitating infectious diseases.
It supports vaccines against 20 diseases, including Covid-19, Ebola, malaria, rabies, polio, cholera, typhoid, and yellow fever.
