Comprehensive Intiatives

There is a tremendous opportunity in India to address the large health and disease burden,reduce child mortality,and improve maternal health. Strong partnerships can be established in India to invest in new ideas,work with universities,scholars,research institutes and product development firms. I recently visited India to meet with our partners working in family planning,agriculture,sanitation,vaccine development,and to look at how we can scale access to essential interventions and innovations. We aim to have an integrated approach for the foundation’s India initiatives,such as Avahan (HIV prevention program),polio eradication,and Ananya (integrated health delivery system in Bihar),to improve outcomes in health and development. In Pune we interacted with the Serum Institute of India officials.

What is the purpose of your meeting at Serum with the scientists?

The Serum Institute of India is one of our top partners in vaccines and is critical to achieving access and affordability goals for vaccines. Our partnership includes accelerating price reduction towards long-term competitive pricing; ensuring sufficient,sustainable supply of preferred products to meet global demand; achieving supply security to mitigate risk of potential supply disruptions,and most importantly,enabling introduction in India through support for local suppliers. Touring the facility allowed me to see Serum Institute’s impressive work firsthand and to discuss additional ways we can work with the institute to develop vaccines for the world’s poorest.

How has the foundation’s work improved health and development in India? What progress has been made?

There have been a number of recent successes in India,including Avahan,which demonstrates that large scale health delivery programs can be built to reduce HIV/AIDS. On the polio front,in Bihar,the latest data suggests vaccination rates have reached 72 per cent,a significant improvement compared to a 30 per cent vaccination rate four years prior. Our work in Bihar aims to improve the coverage of existing routine vaccines,and in Uttar Pradesh we hope to build partnerships to improve coverage of vaccines across India.

Despite the dramatic drop in polio cases in the past year,the threat of continued transmission due to funding and immunization gaps has driven the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) to launch an Emergency Action Plan. Please comment

Encouraged by India’s success,the world is uniting around a Global Emergency Action Plan that focuses on improving the quality of vaccination campaigns,protecting every child with the polio vaccine,and ensuring accountability at every level of the government and within partner agencies. We’re already seeing results. In Pakistan,for example,cases are down 67 per cent so far this year. Still,we are at a tipping point in ending polio and we must ensure success. Progress against polio will not hold without political will and funds to cover a significant funding gap that is undermining the progress to date.