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Margaret Chan, Director-General of the WHO, and the heads of seven other global health agencies, call for a concerted global effort to collect better health data.

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The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), now 10 years old, was established as a successful and innovative public -private partnership to deal with a fundamental inequity. The poorest children in the poorest parts of the world were being denied access to life-saving vaccines simply on the basis of cost. GAVI has been successful in mobilizing significant funding from donors and through innovative financing instruments, immunizing large numbers of children. GAVI has been less successful, at least in the time frames first envisaged, at quickly reducing the prices of new and under-used vaccines to levels affordable by the poorest countries. Vaccines remain some of the most cost effective of public health interventions. As GAVI seeks to introduce a new set of vaccines to tackle major killers such as pneumonia and diarrhoea, and emerging threats such as cervical cancer, it needs to raise significant additional funds. There is no single solution. Multiple and new instruments will be required to raise finance both globally and at the country level, and also to incentivize industry and others to provide vaccines at affordable prices to the poorest countries.

SummaryThe views of various disciplines on the role of education in improving the health and survival of young children in developing countries are discussed, as well as the factors and processes explaining this impact of education and the influence which education could have on risk factors especially relevant to acute respiratory infections (ARI) and pneumonia. This is by reviews of the available evidence on the impact of maternal education on mortality and morbidity. Since there are hardly any data dealing with the impact of education on pneumonia mortality, we focus on post-neonatal mortality, assuming that it is a suitable proxy for pneumonia mortality. Evidence is summarized on several processes or mechanisms which could explain why there is such an impact of education on ARI mortality (and morbidity) in children below 5 .