News story

PM makes vaccination pledge

Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that the UK is stepping up its commitment to vaccinate over 80 million children and save 1.4 million lives by 2015.

This was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government

External site: Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation

Speaking at the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) Summit in London, Mr Cameron said the UK pledge will vaccinate one child every two seconds for five years and save one child’s life every two minutes.

Read the speech

The PM said the pledge will vaccinate more children against preventable diseases than there are people in the whole of England.

The idea of children dying from pneumonia or diarrhoea should be “absolutely unthinkable in 2011″, Mr Cameron said.

But for many parents in the developing world, it is a devastating reality. We can help end that cruel lottery. Britain will play its full part.

Writing in the Observer newspaper over the weekend, the PM defended the decision to protect the aid budget and insisted it was right to deliver on our promises to help the world’s poorest.

In four years’ time, because of the decisions we have taken and the responsibilities we have assumed, we will not just have paid down the deficit. We will also have vaccinated more of the world’s poorest children than there are people in the whole of England. I think everyone should be proud of that.

The GAVI Summit, which is jointly led by the Prime Minister and philanthropist Bill Gates, brings together national governments, private companies, donors and civil society from around the world for an unprecedented global push to protect the poorest in the world from preventable diseases like pneumonia and diarrhoea.

Published 13 June 2011