Friday, July 24, 2020

GAVI, WHO and American Taxpayers

While Washington's funding withdrawal from the World Health Organization (also known as the Bill Gates Health Organization) brought cheers from some quarters as shown here:

 

 

....and here:

 


...in fact, Washington is still heavily involved in Bill Gates vision of vaccinating everyone for just about every health issue and is still financially connected to the World Health Organization, for better or worse.

 

Let's start this posting with some background material by looking at who funds the World Health Organization.  WHO is funded from two main sources; Member States who pay their assessed contributions (a percentage of the nation's Gross Domestic Product) and voluntary contributions from Member States and other partners, mainly the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Here is a graphic showing the top ten contributors for the 2018 - 2019 biennium:

 

 

Note that the United States is, by a wide margin, the largest contributor when it comes to assessed contributions, followed by the United Kingdom, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the GAVI Alliance.  

 

While you may never have heard of the GAVI Alliance (aka the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations sometimes known as the Vaccine Alliance), here is a screen capture from GAVI's website showing their raison d'ĂȘtre:

 

 

GAVI was founded in 2000 as a private-public health care partnership with the goal of increasing immunizations, particularly in poor nations.

  

Now, let's look at who funds GAVI.  Here is a graphic from GAVI's website showing their founding partners, noting the presence of the World Health Organization and the ubiquitous Gates Foundation:

 


Here is a graphic showing GAVI's donor contributions for the period between 2016 and 2020:

 

 

Note that the United States and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations are two of the top three donors over the period from 2016 to 2020.

 

Now, let's look at some recent news from GAVI.  In June 2020, the United Kingdom hosted the Global Vaccine Summit 2020 which was attended by representatives from 62 countries, leaders from global health organizations and, most important, representatives from vaccine manufacturers which raised $8.882 billionn from various governments, foundations, corporations and organizations to immunize children and support the fight against COVID-19.  Here is the post-meeting announcement:

 

 

Now, let's look at the list of donor governments and foundations, corporations and organizations from the meeting, noting that I have highlighted the donation by the United States government:

 

 

Washington has agreed to pour $1.16 billion into GAVI over the years from 2021 to 2025, the second largest donation over the time period.  While this is less than the Gates Foundation donation of $1.6 billion, it is a substantial amount of tax dollars going to fund an organization whose sole purpose is to vaccinate the world and participate in the development of a vaccine for COVID-19 with a donation of up to $200 million as shown here:  

 

 

As well, if we look back in time, to the founding of GAVI, Washington has been one of GAVI's largest financial supporters, donating $2.5 billion or 111.83 percent of all donations received by GAVI:



Here is the breakdown of the $1.16 billion donation from the 2020 - 2021 Department of State budget document dated February 10, 2020 showing that this donation from Washington was already in the works prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and well before the Trump Administration announced its withdrawal from the World Health Organization:

 

 

The donation of $290 million to GAVI for fiscal years 2021 to 2023 is the highest on record (tied with fiscal years 2018, 2019 and 2020.  

 

If we look at GAVI's Board of Directors, here is what we find:

 

 

Note that a permanent representative from the World Health Organization has a position on GAVI's board along with a permanent representative of the Gates Foundation, two of the four permanent positions.

 

Now, let's took at the bottom line.  According to the World Health Organization's 2018 - 2019 biennium report, here are WHO's largest contributors:

 

 

GAVI's voluntary contribution of $388.7 million in fiscal 2018- 2019 puts it in fourth place overall among all donors to the World Health Organization.  In other words, American taxpayers are still funding the World Health Organization through their kind donations to GAVI.  Does that not strike you as a bit of "bait and switch"? 

 

Let's close with a quote from the 2015 report by Jens Martens and Karolin Seitz entitled "Philanthropic Power and Development: Who Shapes the Agenda" which takes an in-depth look at GAVI's (and by extension the Gates Foundation's) approach to vaccines:

 

"The GAVI Alliance is the most prominent example of Gates’ engagement.  Despite the undisputed increase in the number of immunized children, GAVI has been criticized by civil society organizations (CSOs) and researchers for following a “Gates-approach” on global health challenges, focusing on disease-specific vertical health interventions (through vaccines), instead of horizontal and holistic approaches (e.g., health system strengthening)."


It certainly appears that, one way or another, American taxpayers are going to be on the hook for funding Bill Gates' vision of a vaccinated world, particularly as the only valid solution to ending the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

 

2 comments:

  1. I had never heard ofGAVI until this morning when I heard an interview with Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on the BBC's Hard Talk.



    Despite the undisputed increase in the number of immunized children, GAVI has been criticized by civil society organizations (CSOs) and researchers for following a “Gates-approach” on global health challenges, focusing on disease-specific vertical health interventions (through vaccines), instead of horizontal and holistic approaches (e.g., health system strengthening)."

    Then let the CSOs find some funding asd set up their own organization. The criticisms may be valid but to some extent one takes the funding and support from where one can get it and my guess would be that a focused program like GAVI is loss vulnerable to local corruption. And the program is needed.

    Re the USA still funding the WHO, well, no, one board member is not a controlling interest.

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  2. A vaccine is great for ensuring you die at least not from a virus but hunger, infected water, a non functioning health system, lack of hygiene through lack of facilities, missing infrastructure that prevents access to education and services, climate change, nutrition....
    Yeah, vaccine the shit out of the population and point out how good you are while parasites - multi and single cellular ones against whom no vaccine is possible ravage the population.
    Against those and the other health problems a much less glamorous multi pronged approach that it is hard to trumpet your successes about is necessary.

    https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/ten-threats-to-global-health-in-2019

    "This plan focuses on a triple billion target: ensuring 1 billion more people benefit from access to universal health coverage, 1 billion more people are protected from health emergencies and 1 billion more people enjoy better health and well-being. Reaching this goal will require addressing the threats to health from a variety of angles."

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