U.S. Stops Funding for Gavi Global Vaccine Program, Sparking Backlash

FRIDAY, June 27, 2025 (HealthDay News) — The United States will stop sending money to Gavi, a global group that helps vaccinate children in low-income countries, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday.

The decision was made public in a video shared at a Gavi summit in Brussels. In it, Kennedy said Gavi has not done enough to address vaccine safety — though he gave no proof of that claim, The Washington Post said in a report.

“When vaccine safety issues have come before Gavi, Gavi has treated them not as a patient health problem, but as a public relations problem,” Kennedy said.

He also referenced a study suggesting the DTP vaccine — which protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis — may raise the risk of child death. But Gavi strongly denied that claim.

The group said it has full confidence in the DTP vaccine, which has played a major role in reducing child deaths in the countries it helps.

“In places where access to hospitals is limited and disease risk is high, the stronger protection from DTwP against these life-threatening diseases far outweighs the temporary side-effects this vaccine may cause,” Gavi said in a statement.

Gavi is a public-private alliance that has helped vaccinate more than 1.1 billion children in 78 countries since 2000, preventing an estimated 18.8 million future deaths, The Post said.

The group supports vaccines for about 20 infectious diseases, including measles, malaria, HPV and Ebola.

With a large demand for vaccines, Gavi works with manufacturers to secure lower prices and helps countries pay for those doses.

The United States was Gavi’s third-largest donor, providing about 12% of the group’s funding last year, right behind the United Kingdom and the Gates Foundation.

Kennedy’s announcement was met with harsh criticism from health officials.

“The RFK decision will cause children to die,” Prabhat Jha, a professor in global health and epidemiology at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health, said in an email to The Post.

Atul Gawande, former head of global health at the U.S. Agency for International Development, called the decision a “travesty and a nightmare.”

“This pull out will cost 100s of thousands of children’s lives a year — and RFK Jr. will be personally responsible,” he wrote.

Bill Gates, whose foundation helped create Gavi, asked Congress to reverse the decision, saying it would lead to “devastating consequences: more sick kids who fall behind in school, more overcrowded hospital wards, and eventually more grieving parents.”

Still, other countries stepped up. At Wednesday’s summit, donors pledged more than $9 billion to Gavi. The Gates Foundation alone committed $1.6 billion.

A study funded by Gavi and published in The Lancet this week warned that while the World Health Organization’s (WHO) vaccine efforts have saved millions of lives, progress is stalling.