A new, global coalition for vaccine development and immunization, an idea mooted by the World Bank last March, came closer to becoming a reality after it was endorsed at an eighth and final round-table discussion held in New Delhi on February 9th. Delegates from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan and top officials from the World Bank, the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and local industries attended the Delhi round-table. Seven similar meetings held last year in the United States, Europe and Africa also supported the concept.
According to the chairman of the coalition's working group, Myron Levine, director of the Center of Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland, the precise nature of the coalition will become clear this month at a vaccine summit to be hosted by the World Bank in Washington and a meeting in Ballagio, Italy. However, Levine told Nature Medicine that the proposed coalition will replace the current UN coalition, the Children's Vaccine Initiative, and would be in a better position than the WHO to persuade countries to accept vaccines and make them aware of mechanisms to finance immunization programs.
Bjorn Melgaard, the director of the department of vaccines and other biologicals at WHO, and a member of the working group, explained that the coalition could not veto WHO's technical decisions involving vaccines, but could debate issues on which WHO is indecisive, such as the transfer of vaccine production technology to developing countries.
