During the final minutes of Gavi's donor conference in Brussels at the end of June, Robert F Kennedy appeared on a large screen. Gavi has "ignored the science" and the US is therefore closing its wallet, said the health minister, who is known to be a vaccine skeptic.
Bizarre, notes Stefan Swartling Peterson, professor at the Karolinska Institute and former global health chief at the UN Children's Fund Unicef. He is worried.
We are operating in a time when disinformation is spreading from the US health minister. Given the headwind through rumor-mongering and outright lies that are going around the world, we would need to invest even more.
Since its inception in 2000, Gavi has contributed to over 1.1 billion children being vaccinated and new vaccines being developed. Thanks to the alliance, there is now, for example, a vaccine against pneumonia, says Swartling Peterson. It is the disease that is behind the most child deaths.
It is one of the major global health successes. Gavi has been crucial in maintaining vaccination coverage and reaching out with new vaccines.
No Swedish promise
Last year, the US provided approximately three billion kronor to Gavi - around twelve percent of the organization's funding. As a result of the decline, countless children will now die, warns Doctors Without Borders. In March, after reports that the Trump administration was considering cutting off support, warned Gavi CEO Sania Nishtar that one million children may die from preventable diseases: measles, tuberculosis, pneumonia, polio.
The US is not the only country reducing support. Norway is halving its support to Gavi and the UK is reducing support by 25 percent. During the donor conference in Brussels, Swedish promises were completely absent.
Stefan Swartling Peterson questions the world's priorities in a time when more and more are investing in defense and security.
- Outbreaks of epidemic diseases are also a matter of human security, he says.
It doesn't matter how high a wall or fence you build around a country, or how much gunpowder and soldiers defend it. Viruses and bacteria do not respect that.
Disease outbreaks
In his speech to the Brussels conference, Kennedy criticized Gavi's vaccine program against diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough. It's just lies and mistakes, claims Swartling Peterson - which, given the US role, affects the whole world.
The uncertainty is spreading. There are vaccine skeptics and vaccine liars in all countries and they are naturally getting a boost from this.
In the long run, it leads to outbreaks of diseases, warns the professor.
The most obvious, which we already see in Europe and in the US, is measles, which we were on our way to eliminating completely. For children who are already sick and vulnerable, it is literally a life-threatening disease.
Gavi, Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, is a private association that includes, among others, WHO, Unicef, Gates Foundation, and the World Bank. Sweden is one of six donor countries that laid the foundation for the alliance, which was created to improve access to vaccines in low-income countries.
Gavi also contributes to the development of new vaccines and works for price reductions in countries that are less affluent.
Since its inception in 2000, the organization has ensured that over 1.1 billion children in 78 low-income countries have been vaccinated. In this way, they are estimated to have prevented around 18 million future deaths from diseases such as measles, polio, diphtheria, and yellow fever. The alliance also contributes to vaccination against, among other things, Ebola, malaria, rabies, and COVID-19.
The three largest financiers have so far been the US, the UK, and the Gates Foundation. Before Donald Trump was elected president last year, the US had promised one billion dollars to Gavi until 2030. Those funds are now likely to be absent.
In recent years, Sweden has contributed approximately 332 million kronor annually to Gavi and 250 million kronor to the alliance's special vaccine bonds. During this year's donor conference in Brussels, where Gavi raised funds for the next five-year period (2026-2030), Sweden did not make any new promise of funding.
