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A weekly development news platform published by UrgeDevWire, produced by Urge Communications. Covering wider East African region.

Dev-News News Desk| East Africa. Urge- DevWire

Gavi reports record childhood immunisation in 2025 but warns of funding gap

Geneva, 15 July 2026 – Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance said lower income countries achieved record levels of childhood immunisation in 2025, with 73 million children protected by Gavi supported vaccines, the highest number in the Alliance's history. The data, drawn from the 2025 WHO and UNICEF Estimates of National Immunisation Coverage, showed average coverage of the first dose of the diphtheria tetanus pertussis vaccine returning to pre pandemic 2019 levels of 88 percent.

Gavi Chief Executive Officer Sania Nishtar said the achievement demonstrated what is possible when stakeholders work together toward a shared objective, but warned that 2025 marked the final fully funded year of the Alliance's previous strategic period, and that a lack of full funding for the 2026 to 2030 period threatens to stall the momentum achieved.

Speaking at a WHO media briefing the following day, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the Big Catch Up initiative launched with UNICEF and Gavi had reached more than 14 of 34 million zero dose children over three years, delivering more than 125 million doses in 36 countries. He said an estimated 13.5 million children under one year old still received no vaccine at all in 2025, short of the target to reduce that number to 6.4 million by 2030, and called on all countries and donors to invest in fully funding Gavi.

Source: Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, World Health Organization

Dev-News Desk| East Africa. Urge- DevWire