Brazil has joined six European donors to support the IFF for Immunization initiative. According to OneWorld.Net,
The President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, announced today that Brazil will contribute US$20 million over 20 years to the International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm). Brazil joins six European nations -France, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom- in committing funds to this innovative financing mechanism which will drastically reduce the number of poor children who die every year from vaccine-preventable diseases.
Owen comments: The IFFIm initiative is expected to save about 10 millions lives by scaling up vaccination coverage and purchasing vaccines. Donors make pledges of future aid flows, on the basis of which GAVI is able to make long-term, predictable commitments. As explained in a recent paper that I wrote with Ethan Yeh, this structure greatly increases the effectiveness of the spending by allowing long term commitments and front-loading of spending and so saving more than 20 percent more lives than if the aid money were spent in the conventional way.
