How Can the Gates Foundation Leverage Their Vaccine Funding?

At the Center for Global Development’s Global Health blog today, Ruth Levine takes a new look at the Gates Foundation’s ten billion dollar vaccine promise. Her concern is that this huge funding commitment will crowd out other donors on immunization. She also has some suggestions for how to spend the money without pushing out other donors.

It’s an important point. This kind of big money can easily make other donors think that the problem is taken care of, and stop engaging. That is the exact opposite of what the Gates Foundation wants, as Dr. Rajeev Venkayya, Gates Foundation Director of Global Health Vaccine Delivery, mentioned in his interview with UN Dispatch.

Levine recommends a long list of innovative options for ensuring that the Gates vaccination money is supported by other donors. Among other ideas, she mentions giving it all as a matching gift, starting a global health policy fellows program, and donating to the Pan American Health Organization’s Revolving Fund. You can find the whole list in her blog post.