US to re-engage with Gavi vaccine alliance amid Ebola outbreak, Secretary of State says

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that the U.S. would re-engage with the global vaccine alliance Gavi amid the Ebola outbreak in several African countries.

Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the decision had been made a few weeks ago to re-engage, after the Trump administration pulled funding from Gavi last year.

Gavi helps the world's poorest countries to buy vaccines, so they can better protect children from diseases such as measles and diphtheria, but it also works in outbreak response. It has made $50 million available for the ongoing Bundibugyo outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, including $10 million for the immediate response and $40 million to help speed up access to vaccines, which are at an early stage of development.

BUDGET CUTS

The Geneva-based group's budget took a hit last June, when U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr said that the U.S. would no longer provide any funding - representing around $300 million a year - because Gavi ignored safety. Kennedy, a long-time vaccine skeptic, did not provide evidence to support his claim.

Rubio said that Secretary Kennedy had taken a leading role in determining what was going to happen next with Gavi, but the State Department would now re-engage because "we need to drive this to an outcome".

"The State Department a few weeks ago made the decision that we were going to re-engage on this issue of Gavi, respecting what HHS' (Department of Health and Human Services) views are on it as well," Rubio said. "We'd like to get this issue resolved in an outcome that's acceptable both to Congress and also to our goals on global health."

U.S. CONDITIONS

As well as cutting future funding for Gavi, the U.S. was also withholding $600 million of funding for two years that had been approved by Congress. Several U.S. senators had been pushing for that money to be released.

Gavi's chief executive Sania Nishtar said she was "very encouraged" by Rubio's remarks.

"Unlocking the funds that Congress has appropriated to Gavi would enable us to keep the world safe from infectious disease threats," she said in a statement. Gavi's work on Bundibugyo underlined the importance of this work, she said.

One of Kennedy's sticking points in funding Gavi had been the use of the preservative thimerosal in vaccines. Earlier this year, the U.S. said funding was conditional on Gavi phasing out shots using the mercury-based preservative. Anti-vaccine groups, including one founded by Kennedy, have for decades claimed that thimerosal is linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, despite many studies showing no related safety issues.

At the time, Gavi said that such decisions would be made by its board and reiterated the safety of thimerosal as an ingredient. But in May, speaking to Reuters at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Nishtar said that already prior to Kennedy's request Gavi was moving towards newer vaccines that offered wider protection and also did not include thimerosal.

“We would have made this transition, irrespective of the ask, but it so happens that it satisfies their conditionality, so we really look forward to working with them,” she said.

An HHS spokesperson said that both HHS and State were engaging directly with Gavi.

“[We] remain cautiously optimistic that ongoing discussions can produce greater transparency, accountability, and a constructive path forward," the spokesperson said.

-Patricia Zengerle and Jennifer Rigby/Reuters