The Gates Foundation has renewed its commitment to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, after US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. accused it last week of “ignoring safety” – without providing evidence – and saying America would no longer contribute funding to help buy vaccines for the world’s poorest children, writes MedicalBrief.
Kennedy said he admired much of Gavi’s work, particularly its efforts to make medicines affordable worldwide. “Unfortunately, in its zeal to promote universal vaccination, it has neglected the key issue of vaccine safety,” he added.
In a video statement seen by Reuters and shown at a Gavi fundraising event in Brussels, vaccine sceptic Kennedy also accused Gavi of making questionable recommendations around Covid-19 vaccines, and raised concerns about the DTPw (diphtheria-tetanus-whole cell pertussis) vaccine.
“I call on Gavi today to re-earn the public trust, and to justify the $8bn America has provided in funding since 2001,” he said. “Until that happens, the United States won’t contribute more.” He said Gavi “should consider all available science”.
In a statement, Gavi said that safety was key, that it acts in line with World Health Organisation recommendations, and that it has full confidence in the DTPw vaccine, which has contributed to halving since 2000 the child mortality numbers in the countries it supports.
Since its launch, Gavi has vaccinated more than 1.1bn children across 78 countries, preventing nearly 19m deaths from diseases like measles and pneumonia.
The Alliance said it fully concurs with Kennedy on the need to consider all available science, and “remains committed to continuing an evidence-based and scientific approach to its work and investment decisions, as it always has done”.
Gavi leaders, donors and countries with which it works, were in Brussels for the organisation’s pledging summit, where the Alliance raised $9bn for its work from 2026-30, and where several key figures also defended the Alliance’s commitment to safety, including its board Chair Jose Manuel Barroso and Bill Gates, chair of the Gates Foundation, which hosted the summit alongside the European Union.
“Gavi prioritises saving lives, and it’s done with incredible scientific rigour,” said Gates. “We’re constantly looking at safety.”
The Gates Foundation renewed its pledge to support global childhood immunisation efforts, committing $1.6bn over the next five years, reports CIDRAP. The Foundation is the largest private donor to Gavi, contributing $7.7bn to the group over the past 25 years.
‘For the first time in decades, the number of kids dying around the world will probably go up this year instead of down …this is a tragedy,” said Gates. “Fully funding Gavi is the single most powerful step we can take to stop it.”
Gavi has set a target of immunising at least 500m children and saving more than 8m lives over the 2026-2040 cycle, with a focus on vaccinating children against malaria and HPV.
The Gates Foundation says it will also make large investments in emergency vaccine stockpiles, help secure access to vaccines for the poorest countries, and work with regional partners to build resilience in local vaccine manufacturing.
Funding has become a critical issue for Gavi after the United States terminated its support earlier this year, its withdrawal of an annual $300m being followed by a 40% cut in aid from the United Kingdom, the biggest single donor to Gavi.
The UK has given the Geneva-based public-private organisation more than £2bn over the past four years.
But with that country’s aid budget cut back from 0.7% to 0.5% of GDP, and large sums from the remaining pot diverted to pay for the cost of supporting asylum seekers in the UK, officials and aid groups said contributions to Gavi would be slashed significantly.
Gavi officials have estimated that 37.9m fewer children will now be vaccinated.
Vaccines stall
Meanwhile, millions of children worldwide are still at risk of lethal diseases because vaccine coverage has ground to a halt or gone backwards amid persistent health inequalities and soaring levels of misinformation and hesitancy, the largest study of its kind has found.
Major progress in rolling out jabs to billions of children over the past five decades has prevented the deaths of 154m children, according to an analysis published in The Lancet.
Yet since 2010, progress has stalled a halt or even reversed in many countries. Measles vaccination rates have fallen in 100 of 204 countries, while coverage for at least one dose against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, polio or TB has declined in 21 of 36 high-income countries – including France, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US.
The reversal, reports The Guardian, worsened by the pandemic disruption, has left millions of children vulnerable to preventable diseases and death, said the authors of the study led by the University of Washington in Seattle.
“Despite monumental efforts these past 50 years, progress has been far from universal,” said senior study author Dr Jonathan Mosser from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. “Large numbers of children remain under- and un-vaccinated.
“Routine childhood vaccinations are among the most powerful and cost-effective public health interventions available, but persistent global inequalities, challenges from the Covid pandemic, and the growth of vaccine misinformation and hesitancy have all contributed to faltering immunisation progress.”
The findings should be taken as a clear warning that global immunisation targets for 2030 will not be met without urgent action to turn things around, researchers said.
Vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks pose a growing global risk. Increasing numbers of wild-type polio cases have been reported in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and there is a polio outbreak in Papua New Guinea, where less than half of the population is immunised.
In 2024, there was a nearly tenfold increase in measles infections recorded in Europe. The measles outbreak in the US reached more than 1 000 confirmed cases in 30 states in May 2025, surpassing the total number of cases in 2024.
The new analysis provides updated and extended global, regional and national estimates of annual routine childhood vaccination coverage from 1980 to 2023 in 204 countries and territories, using more than 1 000 data sources.
The study shows a 75% drop in the number of unvaccinated zero-dose children worldwide from 58.8m in 1980 to 14.7m in 2019.
However, this long-term progress masks recent challenges and substantial disparities. Since 2010, coverage gains slowed and, in some areas of the world, reversed.
For example, 21 of 36 high-income countries experienced declines in coverage for at least one of the recommended vaccines – including a 12% decline in first-dose measles vaccination in Argentina, and 8% and 6% declines in third-dose diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (whooping cough) vaccination in Finland and Austria respectively.
Persistent health inequalities and the enduring effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are key factors, but vaccine misinformation and hesitancy is the biggest new factor behind the stalling of progress.
Lead author Dr Emily Haeuser, of the University of Washington, called for more concerted efforts to tackle vaccine misinformation and hesitancy.
“Successful vaccination programmes are built on understanding and responding to people’s beliefs, concerns and expectations,” she said.
Gates Foundation pledges $1.6 billion to bolster Gavi's childhood vaccine efforts
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Now Trump pulls plug on childhood vaccines
UK to slash funding contribution to Gavi
Gavi green-lights new jab in global fight against polio