The goal of the GAVI alliance is essentially to meet the fourth Millennium Development Goal, which is to “reduce child mortality.” The alliance recently announced that they will be funding a large project to vaccinate forty of the world’s poorest countries from pneumococcal and rotavirus diseases, including diarrhea, pneumonia, sepsis, and meningitis. Since the two largest killers of children worldwide are pneumonia and diarrhea, this is significant progress towards fourth MDG will be met since the alliance will have vaccinated 90 million people from pneumococcal diseases and 40 million from the rotavirus by 2015. While the fourth MDG is certainly a vital one to improving international health, should the GAVI alliance direct their money toward a goal that has more beneficial outcomes? For example, educating people in low-income countries allows them to develop skills that helps raise individuals as well as the country itself, out of extreme poverty. Accompanied with education is the education and therefore empowerment of women as (and economic) contributors to society. This then satisfies not only the second MDG to “achieve universal primary education”, but the first and third MDGs to “eradicate extreme poverty and hunger” and “promote gender equality and empower women.” So although vaccinating poor children is an exceptional goal, the GAVI alliance may wish to consider navigating such a large influx of donations and funds towards an implement that could accomplish several MDGs. This implement could be perhaps the organization of schools throughout low-income African countries. Advocating certain ideas such as women’s rights, paths to economic success, methods of preventing malnutrition and diseases such as H.I.V. address several MDGs. Through education, we can teach poor countries how to raise themselves out of poverty and prevent hunger, disease, and high rates of mortality.
http://www.gavialliance.org/library/news/press-releases/2011/vaccines-against-major-childhood-diseases-to-reach-37-more-countries/
The efforts by the GAVI alliance cannot go unappreciated. Their work has saved the lives of countless in nations throughout the world. Although it is a valid point that maybe the GAVI alliance should redistribute their funding and supports to help achieve other MDG goals, the importance of vaccination and creating immunization is too great. Without herd immunization, the vaccines that have been given are useless. The GAVI alliance needs to keep treating communities with the necessary treatments so the infected areas stay protected.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kristine's take on the importance of vaccinations as the work of the GAVI alliance, especially since it has the potential to save millions of lives. There are also many other organizations that are addressing the other MDGs so all the different organizations are working collaboratively to reach the entire spectrum of the MDGs instead of just focusing on one. However, one issue with getting people vaccinated just during a short period of time is that it will only benefit that one generation and organizations would have to go into the developing areas yet again to ensure new generations get vaccinated. A large problem with a lot of these solutions to the MDGs is that once the organizations enter into the developing areas, their work will only last for a short time unless funding and resources are continually sent after the aid groups leave. Unfortunately, long term solutions are much more difficult to implement than short term and the resources just simply aren't present to solve the issues permanently.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, there is no vaccine for diarrhea or sepsis; they are both symptoms, not diseases. now that that's settled, I somewhat agree with both sides. While the importance of giving vaccinations to children should not be downplayed as less important than the other MDGs, I do agree that the money should be used more efficiently. if the same amount of money could be used to reach 3 other MDG's, it seems pretty obvious that that's what should be done. As each MDG is reached, it will be easier to reach the others, so we should devote funding to the "easiest" first.
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