The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), and UNICEF have announced a four-year, $150 million financial guarantee to ensure access to vaccines and health supplies in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

The financing will help UNICEF sustain national immunization programs — including COVID-19 vaccination campaigns — and procure COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines and enable the timely procurement of other essential health supplies, such as diagnostics, syringes, and oxygen concentrators, for LMICs while domestic financing is mobilized. Since 2017, UNICEF has accelerated the procurement and delivery of $900 million worth of supplies, including eight hundred and forty million doses of vaccines to more than a hundred countries, by leveraging financial guarantees.

The Gates Foundation’s financing is made available through its $2.5 billion Strategic Investment Fund, which uses a suite of financial tools to address market failures. SIF issued its first $15 million guarantee to UNICEF in 2015 to prevent vaccine stockouts in Nigeria, then extended this commitment in 2017 to enable UNICEF to leverage the financing for procurement for other LMICs.

“COVID-19 has shown us — without a doubt — that inequality of access to health services and vital health supplies like vaccines is not only bad for those left behind — but bad for everybody,” said Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division. “Even with the continuing pressures of the pandemic, it is imperative that essential health supplies continue and are scaled up to reach communities who have been missing out. Financial guarantees and domestic resources committed now will help drive more equitable access to critical COVID-19 tools to control the pandemic, while also ensuring all children have access to vaccines and other lifesaving supplies when they need them.”

“The world cannot have a system in which supplies that are critical to improving the health of all people are auctioned to the highest bidder, forcing poorer countries to go without,” said Chris Elias, president of the Gates Foundation’s Global Development Division. “Access to diagnostics, treatments, vaccines, and other essential health supplies is critical to ensuring that countries can protect their people against COVID-19 and other health threats. This financial commitment will ensure that UNICEF is well-equipped to continue procuring affordable, lifesaving tools for those most in need.”

(Photo credit: Gates Foundation / Strategic Investment Fund)