As CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, I believe in the power of prevention

"Prevention" means taking care and preventing bad things from happening in advance. I have a strong belief in this word based on my experience.

In 2022, Pakistan experienced one of the worst floods in the country's history. The floods wreaked havoc, forcing many people to flee their homes and devastating essential infrastructure, including medical facilities. In the face of this catastrophe, as Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation, a Member of Senate, and as a physician, I prioritized not only restoring what had been lost, but also building a more resilient social system.

In the wake of the floods came outbreaks of disease. And it became immediately clear to me that disease prevention through vaccination is not only an essential part of building a healthy and safe society when times are good: immunity is also an essential part of resilience when disaster strikes.

The importance of prevention is also emphasized in Japan's countermeasures for natural disasters. Japan places great importance on advanced disaster prevention technologies to prepare for earthquakes and Tsunamis, and on education and training for risk minimization throughout society. I believe that the Japanese proverb, "well prepared means no worries" is being put to good use in the real world.

To drive global health equity by leveraging the power of immunisation, I joined Gavi in March this year as CEO. Gavi's mission is to ensure that every child, regardless of place of birth, has access to life-saving vaccines. When infectious diseases no longer threaten the lives of children and people's good health is ensured, it creates a virtuous cycle: a healthy population is the foundation of a healthy economy and a prosperous society. And through our investments in strengthening health systems so that they can deliver vaccines more effectively, we are also working to prevent future health crises by building resilient health systems in the world's lowest-income countries.

Transforming health systems by advancing private sector partnership health innovations

Between 2000-2023, Gavi has helped immunize 1.1 billion children in 78 low and middle income countries (LMICs), preventing more than 18.8 million deaths and contributing to a 50% reduction in under-five mortality. Through our long-term partnership with manufacturers and our aggregation of demand, we have been able to significantly reduce the unit cost of vaccines. To get the cost-reduced vaccines delivered, the entire value chain leading up to the moment when the vaccination is administered must be in place. However, LMICs do not always have adequate infrastructure. Even if vaccines are available, there are challenges such as a lack of cold storage facilities or the inability to deliver to remote areas due to logistical or humanitarian challenges. To overcome these issues while improving immunization rates, it will be essential to utilize technological innovation from multiple fields.

As an example of Gavi's private sector partnership, since 2016, Gavi has been working with American start-up Zipline to implement drone-based vaccine delivery. In Rwanda, the company reduced a delivery that would have taken four hours by land to 15 minutes. After the pilot project in Rwanda, Gavi funding enabled the company to expand the drone-delivery of vaccines to five African countries, including Ghana and Nigeria. Gavi is also promoting cold chain management, logistics management, the use of AI and innovative data analytics. For Japanese companies, NEC's child fingerprint identification system is being used to identify children without birth certificates. Through the use of scanners with enhanced accuracy, it has become possible to identify children as young as 9 months old. Now, they are trying to apply the system to 3-month-olds. Through collaboration with Toyota Tsusho, Gavi has conducted trial runs of vaccine-only refrigerated vehicles in African countries, demonstrating operation cost reductions of 40-60%. These projects are beginning to provide solutions to common problems in LMICs.

Gavi 6.0 for 2030 - Accelerated Immunization with Health System Transformation

2030, six years from now, is the target year of achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Universal Health Coverage (UHC), which Japan rightly attaches great importance to. With the clock ticking, we need to address issues including the threat of new pandemics, changing patterns of disease outbreaks due to climate change, the need to ensure equitable supply of vaccines to children who have never been immunized, and the ongoing fight against infectious diseases that have not yet been eradicated.

Against this backdrop, in June this year, Gavi announced its new strategy "Gavi 6.0" for the period from 2026 to the end of 2030. Under this new strategy, Gavi aims to achieve immunization of an additional 1 billion people in the 10 years to 2030, by vaccinating children twice as quickly as in Gavi's first 20 years. New vaccines will also be introduced, and existing vaccines will be rolled out to combat more infectious diseases, including with vaccine stockpiles for outbreak-prone diseases like Ebola virus, cholera and yellow fever.

Strengthening health systems is essential to achieving these ambitious goals. While building on ongoing cooperation, more proactive leveraging of technological innovations is needed to support more effective and efficient immunization programs. Gavi will make catalytic investments in strengthening health systems during the next strategic cycle. INFUSE, developed since 2016, will support the installment and expansion of the most promising solutions from around the world and attract further investment. A new "Scale-Up Fund" will support the resilience of health systems through the further deployment of digital tools, drone technology, and other technologies that have been successful to date.

Expectations of Japan for G7 2030 and opportunities for further collaboration with Japanese companies

The leadership of Japan, currently involved in strategy formation and decision-making as a member of Gavi's Board and having highlighted global health at the 2023 G7 Presidency, is attracting attention from around the world. We look forward to a strong commitment from Japan at Gavi's upcoming replenishment and hope that we can announce concrete outcomes together in 2030.

In addition, innovation by Japanese companies has great potential for health system transformation in the countries that Gavi supports. The solutions in needs are often the very digital infrastructure and advanced transportation technologies that are also necessary in developed countries. I would urge Japanese business leaders, many of whom will be readers of this publication, to consider Gavi as one of their partners in expanding global businesses that will become tomorrow's competitive power through collaboration with Gavi, from the global perspective of not only utilizing their own technologies in low- and middle-income regions but also reverse engineering them for further transformation in Japan. We sincerely hope that together with Japan, we can pave the way to accelerate our impact to realize a world where everyone can enjoy a healthy and prosperous life.