Vaccines are one of the most cost-effective lifesaving technologies ever developed, but significant supply- and demand-side obstacles constrain their impact. CGD has produced numerous policy proposals to improve equitable access to vaccines.
In 2009, a CGD working group led by Ruth Levine and inspired by the academic work of non-resident fellow and Nobel prize winner Michael Kremer designed a new mechanism to support the research and development of vaccines for diseases in low- and middle-income countries: Advance Market Commitments. G7 Finance Ministers endorsed this approach, and five countries along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation later committed $1.5 billion to a pilot program for a pneumococcal vaccine tailored to the strains common in low- and middle-income countries. Over 80 million children have subsequently been vaccinated against deadly pneumococcal disease.
More than a decade later during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kalipso Chalkidou advised Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, on the launch of the COVID-19 Vaccines Advance Market Commitment, a building block of the COVAX facility.
Since 2020, CGD’s experts have continued to provide timely criticism and policy recommendations to help shape the World Bank’s pandemic response. In 2021, CGD experts conducted analysis and focused outreach to nudge the World Bank to revise its regulatory requirements for vaccine procurement, enabling countries to more easily buy safe, quality, and effective COVID-19 vaccines with the Bank’s finance.
CGD’s analysis also added nuance and perspective to the discussion around a patent waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, elevating related issues that were later discussed at the G7 meeting in Cornwall in June 2021.
CGD has also informed cost-effective procurement and allocation of COVID-19 vaccines at the national level, working with partners in the international Decision Support Initiative (iDSI) network and Africa Centres for Disease Control to generate evidence for decision makers in countries such as Nigeria, Ethiopia, and India. CGD experts also created a toolkit to support African countries with conducting economic analysis for vaccine procurement.
