Leadership and responsibility hand in hand

Unifying aims of stakeholders is key to public-private partnerships

Official group photograph of the attendees at the GAVI Global Alliance Saving Children's Lives pledging conference in London, 13 June 2011

Dr Seth F. Berkley serves as chief executive officer of GAVI The Vaccine Alliance. He is a medical epidemiologist by training and a global advocate on the power of vaccines.

Seth has been featured on the cover of Newsweek and recognized by Wired Magazine as among The Wired 25, a salute to dreamers, inventors, mavericks and leaders. Furthermore, TIME magazine recognised him as one of their 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2009.

Seth joined the GAVI as CEO in August 2011, as it launched its five-year strategy to immunise a quarter of a billion children in the developing world with life-saving vaccines by 2015. Rarely have I seen such a powerful combination of passion, humility and drive.


 How does GAVI work?

Seth Berkley: GAVI, The Vaccine Alliance (formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) is a public-private global health partnership committed to protecting children’s health by increasing access to immunisation and strengthening health systems in the world’s poorest countries. As a public-private partnership, GAVI represents all the key stakeholders in global immunisation: implementing and donor governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, civil society, the vaccine industry and private companies.

What are their core aims?

GAVI'S core aim is to provide new vaccines to children in poor countries. This powerful alliance is a model that is working extraordinarily well. Since 2000, the GAVI Alliance has helped immunize more than 500 million children, saving more than seven million lives. Even with this success, 19 million children still do not receive a full course of the most basic vaccines each year, leading to 1.5 million preventable deaths. We are not rescuing but empowering, our model is designed as a viable approach that puts countries on the pathway to self-sufficiency. If the public and private sectors collectively seize the moment, we can accelerate progress toward a world where every child, everywhere, is fully immunised. And we all will be better for it.

What is your role at GAVI?

My role as I see is to make sure that everyone understands the power of vaccines and as we continue to support countries to introduce new vaccines, our focus is to increase coverage and equity to assure that we reach every child with these vaccines. With as many as 20 countries transitioning out of our financial support in this next five-year period my team and I endeavour to guarantee that programs are sustainable in the long term. We are trying to reach the unreached and create one global society and it can happen.

“We are trying to reach the unreached and create one global society and it can happen.”

How do they raise funds?

GAVI is funded through contributions by government donors and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as by innovative finance mechanisms such as IFFIm, the GAVI Matching Fund and the pneumococcal AMC. The money raised from investors helps fund GAVI programs to meet immediate country demand for vaccines – thus guaranteeing a near-term positive impact on public health that reinforces and safeguards future generations. We work collaboratively on this program with investment banks, donor governments, the World Bank as IFFIm’s treasury manager and private investors. IFFIm has enabled GAVI to nearly double its spending on immunisation. Our force is warranting that our collaboration is a win-win for all involved.

How does the IMD Alumni platform help to spread the word? 

IMD is a prestigious platform with a similar aim to GAVI by that I mean changing the present for high-impact in the future. I sincerely believe it is our responsibility as business leaders, as parents and as a caring society that we invest our time, our money that will pay rich dividends now and in the future. To have the opportunity to come and talk at the IMD Alumni event gives exposure to GAVI’s goal. It is a wonderful opportunity and confirms that IMD sees leadership and responsibility go hand in hand.

 What can others do to help with their great cause? 

Drawing on the individual strengths of its members, the GAVI Alliance model aggregates country demand, guarantees long-term, predictable funding and brings down prices, helping to ensure that generations of children in poor countries do not miss out on lifesaving, economy-boosting vaccines. GAVI Alliance funding supports 12 vaccines, including those against pneumococcal disease and rota virus, the leading vaccine-preventable causes of pneumonia and diarrhoea, and human papilloma virus, which cause cervical cancer. Countries can also request flexible support to address their health system strengthening (HSS) needs. Created in 2000, GAVI is an international organisation – a global Vaccine Alliance, bringing together public and private sectors with the shared goal of creating equal access to new and underused vaccines for children living in the world’s poorest countries.


Seth Berkley serves as CEO of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI Alliance). A medical doctor specialising in infectious disease epidemiology, Berkley was the founder of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) in 1996, where he served as president and CEO. Prior to founding IAVI, Berkley was an officer of the Health Sciences Division at The Rockefeller Foundation. He has worked for the Center for Infectious Diseases of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and for the Carter Center, where he was assigned as an epidemiologist at the Ministry of Health in Uganda.

A version of this article originally appeared on LinkedIn

For more insights into a world health thought leader follow Seth at @GaviSeth. Sunita tweets at @WalkTheTalkGVA

Image: Flickr / UK Department of International Development

 

Sunita Sehmi

Sunita Sehmi is an executive coach, trainer and consultant. In addition to her own consultancy service Walk The Talk, Sunita also works as a coach for the High Potential Leadership Programme at IMD Business School and as a business mentor at the Branson School of Entrepreneurship.