Germany $128m to bolster EAC immunization lead
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| Germany Chancellor, Angela Merkel |
It’s intended to support health
and education programmes in the East African Community, and its majority,
($105m [EUR95m]), will go to the EAC’s immunization programme with Gavi the
Vaccine Alliance.
The additional grant, financed
through the German Development Bank, will finance the procurement of at least
four different types of vaccines (Pentavalent, Rotavirus, Pneumococcal and Measles)
for children in all six EAC partner states.
The cooperation aims at reducing
child mortality in the region and mainly targets newborns.
To date, the German Development
Cooperation with the EAC has financed nearly 80 million doses of life-saving
vaccines for the region since the support started in 2013 and the average
immunization coverage in the region was substantially increased, making the
EAC’s immunization programmes the strongest in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Other funds, including $15.5m,
will go towards the EAC Regional Centre of Excellence for Health Supply Chain
Management located at the University of Rwanda in Kigali, $2.2m to the support
of Ebola preparedness within the ongoing EAC-German project, Regional Network
of Reference Laboratories for Communicable Diseases, and $5.3m to the Academic
Centre for Digital Innovation in East Africa at the Nelson Mandela African
Institution of Science and Technology located in Arusha.
EAC and Germany have over 20
years of successful development cooperation focused on health as well as
regional economic and social integration.
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