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Britain Launches Immunization Plan to Save Poor Children

Posted on: Saturday, 10 September 2005, 09:00 CDT

Britain launches immunization plan to save poor children

LONDON, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown Friday launched a 4-billion US dollar vaccination plan in London to save poor children in developing countries.

The International Finance Facility for Immunization (IFFIm) will raise funding over 10 years to cut the number of deaths from diseases like measles, polio, hepatitis B, tetanus, and diphtheria.

Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Sweden are among the countries backing the program, which aims to save the lives of 5 million children and 5 million adults.

Britain has pledged 130 million dollars each year, and France is giving 100 million dollars a year.

The new financing mechanism will use long-term financial commitments to provide "frontloaded" resources for the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunization.

"By the power of medical advance with a wholly new innovative mechanism to frontload long-term finance, IFFIm ... will enable 10 million lives to be saved and spare millions of families the agony of a loved one needlessly dying," Brown said during the launch.

Later, he told BBC that the North and West could not allow "disquiet, anger and outrage" to breed in developing nations and argued that much of the British public supported increased overseas aid.

Nearly 30 million children go without immunization each year. Illnesses from immunizable diseases make up more than half of all illnesses in the poor world -- nine times the level in the richest countries.

At the launch, Graca Machel, chairwoman of the Vaccine Fund Board, said she hoped nations such as the United States would become donors to the IFFIm.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS

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