A World Health Organization worker prepares a vaccine in Mbandaka, Congo, in 2018. (Sam Mednick/AP)
The United States is planning to terminate more than $1 billion in funding for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, an international organization that offers lifesaving vaccinations for millions of people each year in some of the world’s poorest countries, according to information in a document the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, sent to Congress this week.
The surprise cuts to Gavi “would have a disastrous impact on global health security, potentially resulting in the deaths of more than 1 million children over five years and endangering lives everywhere from dangerous disease outbreaks,” said Sania Nishtar, a Pakistani doctor and chief executive of the organization.
The halt in funding was set out in a lengthy spreadsheet detailing cuts to USAID. Gavi said it was not given any warning about the halts to its U.S. funding, which it said came as the organization was negotiating with the White House and Congress.
The USAID spreadsheet, which The Washington Post has reviewed, includes a list of 5,341 separate awards that have been cut, compared with 898 that are listed as active. The awards that remain contain roughly $8.3 billion in unobligated funds, still waiting to be distributed and likely unspent, while the terminated programs had roughly $27.7 billion in unobligated funds.
The terminated grant to Gavi was worth $2.6 billion and was expected to last until the end of 2030, according to the document. Roughly $1.75 billion is listed as unobligated. The organization said it learned of the cuts when they were reported by the New York Times on Wednesday.
“We have not received a termination notice from the U.S. government,” said Nishtar, adding that GAVI had been in the process of engaging with the White House and Congress to ensure it the $300 million approved by Congress for its 2025 activities.
The State Department declined to answer specific questions about the cut to Gavi’s funding, but said in a statement that “terminations were executed where Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio determined the award was inconsistent with the national interest or Agency policy priorities.”
The State Department has not cut programs that “advance the core national interests of the United States,” the statement continued, highlighting continued funding for the response to the Ebola outbreak in Uganda, lifesaving HIV care and treatment, and emergency assistance in conflict zones. (PEPFAR, the multibillion-dollar U.S. effort to fight the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, remains in limbo).
Gavi is a public-private global partnership that was founded 25 years ago to increase immunization in poorer nations. It claims that its work supplying vaccines to poorer nations that might not otherwise afford the doses has saved 13 million lives.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Gavi led Covax, a joint effort to ensure that poorer nations received coronavirus vaccine doses. The first Trump administration refused to join that effort, though the Biden administration later supported it and helped boost the ailing program.
As of last year, the United States was the third-largest funder of Gavi, behind Britain and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, according to calculations by KFF.
Janeen Madan Keller, a fellow who tracks global health at the Washington-based Center for Global Development, said that the U.S. move to cut Gavi funding was “alarming and unprecedented.”
“Gavi is one of the most impactful global health initiatives. We know that vaccinating children is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve health and save lives — which is exactly why Gavi has enjoyed bipartisan support to date,” said Madan Keller.