The Immediate-past Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has bagged two key global appointments.
By her new appointment, Okonjo-Iweala becomes the first to serve as Chair of the 28-member Board of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), an international public-private partnership committed to saving the lives of children and protecting people’s health by improving access to immunization in developing countries, including Nigeria.
She was elected to the position after a competitive international search process, according to a statement by her Media Adviser, Mr. Paul Nwabuikwu.
GAVI is a $12 billion multilateral partnership which disburses grants of upwards of $1.8 billion annually to developing countries for immunization programmes.
It brings together developing countries and donor governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine industry in both industrialized and developing countries, research and technical agencies, civil society, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other private philanthropists.
The organization is funded by governments of Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, the People’s Republic of China, Republic of Korea and Russia.
Others are South Africa, Spain, the State of Qatar, the Sultanate of Oman, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States as well as the European Commission, the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) and other institutional and corporate partners. [myad]
