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Seventh GAVI Board Meeting Stockholm, Sweden

11 March 2002

Good morning. We have called this third Board meeting, in addition to the previously planned June and November meetings, to address a number of critical issues around the effective use of resources and new vaccines that are increasingly being disbursed to countries.

Last night's presentation and discussion on the "Initial Impact of GAVI from a country perspective" set the stage for our meeting today. We are starting to learn from countries what is working and what is not and what are the realities of the poorest countries in the world where we are targeting our efforts vis-à-vis the ambitious goals set a global level.
(add a few points that emerge from evening discussion)

The critical issues on today's agenda are:

Monitoring and reporting on country performance,

Finalising the basis for performance-based rewards,

Reviewing guidelines for Vaccine Fund support to Research and Development, and,

Moving forward with the Board-requested review of GAVI coordinating mechanisms and processes.
I welcome the upcoming GAVI review and think we should take this opportunity to take a serious look at our information sharing and decision-making processes and strengthen them, with one clear objective: to ensure that everything we are doing benefits the number of children who get immunized.

The issue of monitoring the work of national immunization programs is also critical, and we need to regularly remind ourselves that it is NATIONAL immunization progams, not "GAVI" programs or UNICEF or WHO programs that we are supporting. We here to support country efforts and their sustainability, not create parallel programs. Their success is our success.

On that note, I want to particularly welcome Dr. Basu, from India, who is participating on behalf of our new Board member, Dr. Thukur, the Minister of Health, who will be representing Asia on our Board. I value tremendously the input of our country representatives to the Board, particulary as we face increasing issues at country level.

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