I was at the launch of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization at the Davos meeting in 2000. Bill Gates came off the stage irritated: “How can people make something so important so boring?” he asked.
The Gates Foundation had just announced its $750 funding for the vaccine initiative. The assembled worthies from UN organisations on the stage with Gates were, however, worthy rather than inspiring at least during that plenary. The Gavi fund is now over $1 billion, but it is apparently causing problems as well as solving some others. According to the Save the Children Fund, Gavi is encouraging poor countries to buy vaccines they will not be able to afford when their grants run out. They would be better off, according to Save the Children, concentrating on cheaper, more basic vaccines.
Delivering healthcare in developing countries is plagued by difficulties. I’m pretty sure the world is better off with Gavi than without. But the Save the Children criticisms do point out that even the most well-meaning programmes need to be sunject to constant scrutiny and revision.
Just when you think the international news could not get bleaker, something brightens the horizon. I hadn’t read about the Children of Abraham before, but Muhammad Hurani and Amir Tadmor look to be doing more for peace than a clutch of Nobel prize winners.
The two are both Israelis, one a Jew, the other a Palestinian. “They aim
to change the minds of both warring nations one person at a time. Their strategy could not be simpler: they want to reach Israeli and Palestinian individuals, especially the children, and educate them out of hate.”
What’s particularly admirable about these extraordinary men is that they don’t sugarcoat the issue (and there are plenty of people about who just spout platitudes about peace). They are fighting what used to be called the good fight.
They don’t make them like they used to. Tomorrow Muhammad Ali is 60. In tribute, The Guardian has re-run Alastair Cooke’s report on the Clay-Liston fight in 1964. You don’t read writing like this any more.