Africa: Critics challenge GAVI's vaccine spending practices

Critics are challenging the way a major procurer of vaccines for the developing world operates. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), a public-private initiative that held a major funding meeting in London, United Kingdom recently, raising US$4.3 billion, has come under fire for the way it spends its money. 'The GAVI model depends on giving more and more money, year after year, to get vaccines to poor countries in ways that are not self-sustaining and at prices that are unaffordable,' says Donald Light, a professor at Princeton University, United States. GAVI's decisions are skewed by the pharmaceutical companies that sit on its board, non-governmental organisation Médecins Sans Frontières and development charity Oxfam, tell The Guardian.