The group is part of an international organization created in 2000.
QUICK FACTS:
- The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) has published a list of 11 viruses that they believe have the potential to cause the “next pandemic.”
- GAVI is an international group founded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and claims to help vaccinate “almost half the world’s children against deadly and debilitating infectious diseases.”
- GAVI’s parent organization, IFFIm, was started in 2000 to bring public and private sector groups together for the purpose of “saving lives and protecting people’s health by increasing the use of vaccines in an equitable and sustainable manner.’”
- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was a founding partner of GAVI, and all told, has pledged a total of 4.1 billion dollars to the organization so far.
- Included on GAVI’s list of potential new pandemics are Hantavirus, Rift Valley fever, and Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, all of which are not currently known to spread person-to-person, only animal-to-person.
GAVI’S PREDICTIONS:
- “The COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t the first to devastate the world and it won’t be the last. In a new series, we round up emerging infectious threats that have the potential to erupt into global pandemics,” the organization wrote on its website.
- “At the 2020 Global Vaccine Summit, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced USD 1.6 billion for GAVI’s next 2021-2025 strategic period,” GAVI states. “In addition to this funding, the Foundation pledged USD 150 million in support of GAVI’s COVAX AMC to ensure equitable access to vaccines for AMC-eligible economies.”
BACKGROUND:
- Gates has already called for a “global alert system” as well as a “pandemic fire squad” for the “next pandemic.”
- The Microsoft founder’s intense interest in the next deadly virus has left Americans questioning how far he will go to make sure his donations are being used against a real threat.
