Princess Cristina attends an event organized by the Savings Bank of Murcia Foundation to support childhood vaccinations

la Caixa Foundation Childhood Vaccination Alliance, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and in partnership with the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), celebrates its fifteenth anniversary with an event that includes the Caixa Foundation Princess Christina, Director of International Affairs, also participated. The meeting highlighted the 15 years of results of this initiative, which aims to combat preventable diseases that pose a huge risk to the lives of minors in their countries of origin due to limited access to health care.

Since 2008, thanks to the solidarity of 283 Murcian companies, the Child Vaccination Alliance of “la Caixa” Foundation has successfully vaccinated 162,556 particularly vulnerable boys and girls in Africa and Latin America against pneumonia and tetanus or vaccines for other diseases such as diphtheria. They participated in this solidarity act in 2008.

The childhood vaccination program is supported by donations from the “la Caixa” foundation, 3,700 companies and financial institution clients across Spain, in addition to small donations from citizens and donations from Bill and Melinda Gates.

A total of nearly 9 million boys and girls have been vaccinated in 10 countries in Africa and Latin America, such as Mozambique, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mauritania, Nicaragua, Central African Republic, Sudan, Bolivia and Tanzania.

“At the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation we will continue to work on this project and contribute even more to the work of Gavi, because we firmly believe that we all must continue to work to avoid the risk of infant deaths due to lack of vaccines Death. This is our responsibility,” stressed Antonio Villar Bertrand, general director of the foundation.

reaffirm commitment

The fundraiser is based on a “matching fund” formula under which all donations received will be multiplied by four. This is because for every euro donated, one euro is added to the foundation “la Caixa” and a further two euros are added to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In this way, Gavi can meet 100% of Mozambique’s demand for pneumonia vaccines over the past four years and an average of 25% of Ethiopia’s needs in 2021 and 2022.

In 2023, the “la Caixa” foundation, Gavi’s first private partner in Europe, reiterated its commitment to the international organization, doubling all donations to the alliance up to a maximum of 2 million euros. The project also offers the possibility of donations from third parties. Therefore, the program accepts donations from companies as part of its corporate social responsibility. As a philanthropic initiative to reduce infant mortality, partnership opportunities also extend to CaixaBank’s customers and employees, as well as to society at large.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which launched its Matching Funds initiative in 2011, also maintains its commitment to double the total amount of all financial contributions to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, in 2023, to a maximum limit of $400 million euros, while ISGlobal joined the business consortium as a strategic partner in 2014 and continues to contribute its scientific and academic experience to the project.

All financial contributions from entities, private companies and society at large are aimed at expanding economic resources to promote immunization of boys and girls in 10 countries in Africa and Latin America. The main focus is on distributing pneumococcal vaccines in Mozambique and Ethiopia to combat pneumonia, a lung infection that remains the leading cause of death among children worldwide.

Every 42 seconds a child dies from pneumonia

From April 26 to 27, the “la Caixa” Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Every Breath Counts Alliance organized the second Children’s Pneumonia Forum at the CaixaForum in Madrid, where global vaccines and The Alliance for Immunization and Immunization also participated in the forum. The meeting brought together more than 300 participants, including senior government officials from 14 countries that account for 60% of all childhood pneumonia deaths. The event was also attended by members of the Spanish government, leaders of the United Nations and multilateral development agencies, large donors, NGOs, private companies and the scientific community.

The international forum debates and analyzes new challenges in the wake of Covid-19 and subsequently decides on the actions and measures that governments must take to reduce child deaths from pneumonia and accelerate achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 3) on child survival.