Gates-backed group gives $390M for Ebola vaccines

LONDON — The GAVI Alliance, the biggest provider of money for vaccines sent to developing countries, will commit as much as $390 million to buy Ebola shots and support their use in an effort to stop the deadly outbreak in West Africa.

The Geneva-based organization funded by governments and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will pay as much as $300 million for 12 million courses of Ebola vaccines, it said in a statement Thursday.

GAVI will also provide as much as $45 million to roll out vaccines that win endorsement from the World Health Organization and a further $45 million to help Ebola-affected countries rebuild health systems and immunization services.

Drugmakers including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, NewLink Genetics Corp. and Johnson & Johnson are working with regulators and nonprofit groups to develop workable vaccines for a disease that has infected almost 18,000 people and killed more than 6,000, mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

“We are making determined efforts to ensure that people living in Ebola-affected countries are protected as soon as possible and do not have to face another terrible outbreak in the future,” Dagfinn Hoeybraaten, chairman of GAVI’s board, said in the statement.

Funding from GAVI may also be used to create stockpiles of first- and second-generation Ebola vaccines, to be managed by the WHO, which countries can access rapidly in future outbreaks.

Since 2000, GAVI has contributed to the immunization of 440 million children and the prevention of an estimated 6 million deaths, according to the organization.