Before CGD's Making Markets for Vaccines working group convened, pharmaceutical companies had little incentive to invest in the development of vaccines for diseases primarily affecting low-income countries. The working group, co-chaired by Ruth Levine, designed a new approach called Advance Market Commitments, under which donors promise to buy a vaccine against a specific disease when and if such a vaccine is developed. The G-7 finance ministers endorsed the approach in 2009; five countries (Canada, Italy, Norway, the UK, and Russia) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have since committed $1.5 billion in a pilot program for a vaccine to prevent the strains of pneumococcal disease common in developing countries, where three million children die annually of diseases caused by the bacterium.
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