RFK Jr.

Johannesburg – Every four years, representatives of the Global Governments alliance, pharmaceutical manufacturers, United Nations and philanthropic organizations known as Gavithat helps to obtain vaccines to the people who need them, gather to block new financing promises. Just when this year’s meeting in Brussels was coming to an end on Wednesday, the United States Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced that all Washington’s funds would cease.

In a three and a half minutes video message that Kennedy Shared on social networks, he said that the Trump administration was stopping the funds for the organization because it had “neglected the key issue of vaccine safety.”

Kennedy, who has tried to distance himself from the “anti -cacuna” label, has a story of making misleading statements about vaccine safety and has been linked to Anti -Baccine Activism Groups.

Gavi says he has helped vaccinate more than 1,100 million children in 78 low -income countries and avoided more than 18.8 million deaths since its creation 25 years ago. His approach is to obtain vaccines, especially new vaccines, to populations that would have difficulty allowing or accessing them.

Kennedy argued in the video that Gavi “has neglected the key issue of vaccine safety,” and that “when vaccine safety problems have occurred before Gavi, Gavi has treated them not as a patient’s health problem, but as a public relations problem.”

Kennedy accused Gavi of ignoring science and said that the alliance must “justify the $ 8 billion that the United States has given it since 2001”.

The United States has long been among the main taxpayers of the Government to the financing of Gavi, which also comes from private organizations.

The Biden Administration had committed to $ 1.6 billion in funds for the organization from 2026 to 2030, an approximately equal amount to the funds promised by the Gates Private Foundation, and the shock and indignation reverberated at the conference in Brussels after Kennedy’s announcement.

Bill Gates, co -founder of Microsoft and the Gates Foundation, said on social networks that the measure would have “devastating consequences.” He asked the United States Congress to continue financing Gavi, warning that if he did not, “more sick children will be late at school”, and there would be “more hospital neighborhoods and eventually more afflicted parents.”

“If Congress allows this to happen, the consequences will be devastating,” said the CEO of the Gates Foundation, Mark Suzman. “There will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of preventable deaths, especially between mothers and children.”

Dr. Atul Gawande, researcher and public health surgeon at the Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston who previously held a position at the Gavi Board, said Kennedy would be personally responsible for the results of the Financing of the US Government.

“I would expect to see significant changes and reductions in access to safe and effective vaccines for children, in the poorest and poorest countries in the world,” a US official with decades of experience in world health and vaccination programs for anonymity told News themezone. “Kennedy’s rhetoric in vaccine safety is not useful and the vaccine vaccine is likely to feed people in the world’s minds, where we will surely see more non -controlled outbreaks of preventable vaccine diseases. This is very unfortunate.”

The UN World Health Organization has noticed since 2019 that the vaccine vaccine and distrust are one of the main threats to global public health.

The objective of this year’s conference was to ensure funds to achieve the objective of the organization of more than 90% global coverage with essential vaccines for a wide range of diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus and measles. Gavi received more than $ 9 billion in financing commitments on Wednesday, but hoped to obtain $ 11.9 billion over the next five years, with the aim of immunizing 500 million children worldwide.

Other countries recognized the importance of Gavi and increased their contributions at the conference on Wednesday.

Heading that list was the United Kingdom

The British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, announced $ 1.7 billion for the next five years, which turned the new largest donor of the United Kingdom Gavi.

The president of Ghana, John Darami Mahama, who addresses the Gavi conference on Wednesday, began detailing the fight of his younger brother with polyomyelitis, and the stigma associated with the disease, which has been practically eradicated worldwide thanks to vaccination programs launched in the late 1980s.

“I understand the importance of vaccines,” Mahama told delegations.

When his brother was diagnosed, access to the vaccine in Ghana was close to zero, but the president said that, through the association with Gavi, 97% of the population was now vaccinated.

He said that officials were still working to reach the last 3%, approximately “65,000 children in remote areas, difficult to reach for vaccines to save lives”, and that Ghana planned that Gavi’s support no longer needed for 2030.

Mahama concluded his comments with a current comparison, saying: “A B-2 spiritual bomber who dropped bombs in Iran cost $ 2.13 billion,” and that had made the calculations, and added: “Surely the world can afford the value of four B-2 bombers to save 500 million children. It is an choice that we must make.”

• Department of Health and Human Services of the United States
• Vaccine
• COVID-19
• United Nations
• World Health Organization
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
• RFK Jr.
• Vaccines