In 2009, Pfizer became one of the first companies to participate in the Advance Market Commitment (AMC), a pioneering partnership between Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and donor governments to make vaccines available to infants and children in least-developed countries. Further, Pfizer partnered with Gavi and UNICEF to provide humanitarian relief to Rwanda and Gambia, enabling these governments to launch an additional national immunization program.
Since March 2010, Pfizer has been working with Gavi, an international organization that brings together public and private sectors to create access to vaccines for infants and young children through the AMC. The AMC provides vaccines to the world’s most resource-constrained countries on an accelerated, affordable, and sustainable basis. Nicaragua was the first Gavi-eligible country in the developing world to launch an immunization program under the AMC. By December 2011, 16 countries launched an immunization program under the AMC.
The AMC is a public-private health funding mechanism administered by Gavi specifically for the world’s poorest countries, which are least able to acquire vaccines on their own. Countries served under the AMC are those with a gross national income (GNI) that is at or below US $1,580 per capita (as of 2015) on average over the past three years. This threshold is established by Gavi, in cooperation with the World Bank, and is the fundamental premise underlying the contributions by donors.
In 2010, Pfizer entered into a 10-year agreement to provide humanitarian relief to infants and young children in the world’s poorest countries under the terms of the AMC. In April 2015, Pfizer Vaccines President and General Manager, Susan Silbermann visited Malawi to engage the Minister of Health and see firsthand the country’s well-managed immunization program.
Pfizer entered into a two-year agreement with a humanitarian organization to provide relief and emergency humanitarian assistance in 2014. Recognizing ongoing needs to provide relief and emergency humanitarian assistance, we continue to offer to expand upon past donation agreements. To help ease potential logistics challenges where adequate cold chain storage is not available, Pfizer works with its partners to develop strategies for storage of medicines prior to distribution.