The International Finance Facility for Immunisation

By Alex Singleton | 9 September 2005

Britain's finance minister Gordon Brown has announced a plan that aims to save 10m children in developing countries. It will raise £2.2bn over 10 years and aims to cut the number of deaths from diseases like measles, polio, hepatitis B, tetanus, and diphtheria.

The scheme, the International Finance Facility for Immunisation, will raise money from financial markets and "frontload" aid by pumping the money in now, while the repayments come from future aid budgets. Countries supporting the scheme include Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Sweden. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has promised a further $750m over 10 years.

Increasing access to immunisation is something that we should all welcome, though not everyone is happy with how the scheme is being run. Peter Hardstaff of the World Development says it is wrong that financiers will benefit from the scheme. Meanwhile, a new report by Philip Stevens of the Campaign for Fighting Diseases says that dealing with the root causes of poverty is the best way of dealing with health problems: "If rates of economic growth in less developed countries had been 1.5 per cent better during the 1980s, at least 500,000 infant deaths could have been prevented."

But Microsoft's Bill Gates, whose foundation is a major contributor, says this is "the best investment we have ever made."