Raise a glass of gavi to Britain’s great aid success

Helen Fielding | The Times – June 14, 2012

The UK gave the most aid and stuck to its promises.


One of the entertaining things about the British sensibility is our obsession with fiascos. The Olympics have provided a cornucopia of fiascos: the ticket fiasco, the Heathrow fiasco, the transport fiasco, even a toxic sponsors fiasco.

But as we saw with the jubilee celebrations, sometimes the best laid plans for a national fiasco don’t turn out as we expect. Yes, there was the royal bladder fiasco and the weather fiasco, but the Queen was brave and British, we had a good time and from certain camera angles the flotilla did look quite a bit like a Canaletto.

Britain can get things right! A year ago we got something spectacularly right that we should celebrate as loudly as the jubilee. We hosted a Gavi pledging summit: Gavi standing for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (as well as the more easily digested crisp Italian wine).

In the complex world of aid, vaccines are a spectacular success. Smallpox was officially eradicated in 1979 and Gavi — made up of governments, big donors and pharmaceutical giants — is mounting an effective onslaught on the remaining preventable deadly diseases. Pneumonia, for example, still kills two million children a year.

Of all the countries donating to Gavi, Britain gives the most by a long way. At our summit, international donors committed $4.3 billion in four hours. There’s still work to be done: drug companies need to drop their prices, health systems to be strengthened, more corporate pledges encouraged, vaccines equitably spread, but 62 million more children will be immunised as a result of the summit.

Britain is one of the few European countries to stick to its promises on the percentage it gives in aid. And in the middle of the Olympics, David Cameron is hosting a World Hunger Summit to address the problem of a world where one in seven children still goes hungry. Of course, the summit may turn out to be a PR fiasco but we, along with Save the Children and other NGOs, should give it our support. It’s humanitarian leadership.

And if it repeats the success of the Gavi summit, Olympics fiascos should fade from memory. The Olympic motto, “Inspiring a Generation”, could merge into “Immunising a Generation” and “Feeding a Generation” and even, ambitiously, “Inspiring a Generation not to think everything’s a Fiasco”.

Also, as we’ve all been told to go to the pub if we’re caught in the transport fiasco, we could have a glass of gavi to celebrate our aid success, secretly reassured by the knowledge that we are working — together — towards the Drunken Olympics Fiasco.


Helen Fielding is the author of Bridget Jones’s Diary and an ambassador for Save the Children.