Senior fellow Charles Kenny's weekly article in Foreign Policy on Vaccines.
From the Article
In 2009, veterinarians at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization made a remarkable announcement: Rinderpest, a livestock-borne disease, would soon be eradicated. OK, so maybe it wasn't front-page news, but rinderpest -- which causes animals to develop fever, followed by diarrhea and (frequently) death -- has over thousands of years been a recurring plague on human civilization. It has destroyed the food supplies of entire countries such as Ethiopia, which lost a third of its population to a rinderpest-related famine in the late 19th century. The FAO's eradication effort, launched in 1992, marks only the second time a disease has been deliberately wiped off the face of the Eearth; the first, better-known case was smallpox, which killed between 300 million and 500 million people over the course of the 20th century before its eradication in 1980.
On June 13, the global community tried for a repeat performance with a pledge drive, held by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). Thanks to support from aid agencies from Britain to Russia, as well as the Gates Foundation, GAVI raised $4.3 billion to immunize 250 million kids worldwide between now and 2015, protecting against diseases from tetanus to tuberculosis, whooping cough to diphtheria. It's a daunting project, but one that is less implausible than it once was: The range of diseases that can be prevented is growing ever longer, and now includes HPV, rubella, typhoid, and Japanese encephalitis. Vaccines for malaria and dengue fever may not be far behind, and there's even some hope for HIV. GAVI itself boasts a strong track record: Over the organization's first decade, more than 5 million child deaths were prevented though more rapid introduction and increased coverage of vaccines in low-income countries. But, going forward, the alliance is going to have to think more about getting parents to vaccinate their kids -- the demand side of health-- especially if it wants to repeat the huge victory of wiping out a disease.