One of the biggest vaccine funding efforts ever is underway with a goal to inoculate 300 million children between 2016 and 2020. The $7.5 billion effort could save up to 6 million lives, according to the organization behind the project.
The GAVI Alliance is striving to raise the funding from global health philanthropists and government of developed countries. If the project is successful, it would more than double the number of lives saved by the group and raise that number to 12 million.
The group has been supported by over $12 billion since 2000 and has immunized 440 million children in more than 70 emerging countries.
"We are faced with an historic opportunity to support countries to build sustainable immunization programs that will protect entire generations of children," the group's chairman, Dagfinn Hoybraten, said in a statement.
The group already has the support of the World Health Organization, government agencies, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The vaccination focus is on deadly killers including cervical cancer, diarrhea and pneumonia.
GAVI uses its support sway to get low vaccine medicine from top pharma players such as Merck and Pfizer.
The group says that such inoculation programs have a direct impact on emerging and poor countries' economies.
It claims if its current funding goal is reached it would mean $100 billion to the economies of developing nations.
