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.