Senior Adviser to the Pandemic Center, Adjunct Professor of the Practice in the Department of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health
A serial entrepreneur and pioneer in global public health for more than 35 years, Dr. Berkley has been a champion of equitable access to vaccines and of innovation, and a driving force to improve the way the world prevents and responds to infectious disease. From 2011 to 2023 Berkley served as CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. During his tenure at Gavi, Berkley led a team that worked toward broadening global immunization access, resulting in more than half of the world’s children being vaccinated annually. His leadership was equally significant in co-founding and spearheading COVAX, an initiative that facilitated the distribution of over 2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to 146 nations.
As a senior advisor to the Pandemic Center, Dr. Berkley joins an interdisciplinary team that takes a holistic approach to pandemic preparedness. His global health leadership experience will bolster the Center’s efforts to build resilience to biological threats around the world and help mitigate their impact.
LOOSENING UP — The continued spread of measles throughout the country isn’t stopping some states from trying to make it easier for parents to skirt school vaccine requirements for their children, POLITICO’s Lauren Gardner reports.
Idaho and West Virginia lawmakers recently loosened rules on vaccine mandates, while lawmakers from Florida, Louisiana and Texas are weighing measures that would make it more difficult for health providers to deny care — from organ transplants to pediatric well visits — to people who aren’t vaccinated.
Why it matters: The state efforts, among others that would crack down on the use of certain vaccines, come amid longtime vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ascent to power in Washington as HHS secretary.
Texas, which has been the cradle of domestic vaccine resistance for the past decade, is now the epicenter of an exploding measles outbreak.
Professor at Brown Univeristy School of Public Health and former CEO of GAVI, the vaccine alliance, Dr Seth Berkley championed equitable access to vaccines and co-founded Covax during the pandemic. In an interview with Sunday Times he watns of the repercussions of abrupt fund cuts
Excerpts:
About this episode:
For 25 years, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance has been a global effort to purchase and distribute lifesaving vaccines to the poorest of countries and help them build up their health systems. Now, it’s the latest chop in a blitz of proposed federal funding cuts to global health. In this episode: an overview of Gavi’s innovative model that buys vaccines for 50% of the world’s children and has prevented around 19 million deaths, and the catastrophic potential if the U.S. withdraws its financial support.
Guest:
Dr. Seth Berkley is the former CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. He is a senior advisor to the Pandemic Center and an adjunct professor of the practice in epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health. His new book, Fair Doses, will be released next fall.
Host:
Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, the largest center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
What are the biggest threats to the health security of the American people? There are some strong candidates. Avian influenza is spreading in birds, cattle, and 50 mammalian species. Measles cases are surging at home and abroad. COVID-19 is still spreading and could mutate into a more deadly strain. Farther afield, Uganda continues to respond to an Ebola outbreak and Mpox has been seen in 127 countries. But perhaps the biggest threat to America’s health could be self-inflicted. According to a report published yesterday in the New York Times, our leaders intend to end funding for international immunization programs—including the Gavi Alliance I led from 2011 to 2023—that for decades have protected Americans from health threats abroad. These cuts would represent a grave threat to the health, well-being, and livelihoods of every American.
Devex sat down with the former head of Gavi to discuss the difficult times ahead as the foreign aid landscape drastically changes; what this could mean for the health of the world's population, and where priorities should lie.
The health of the world’s population exists on shaky grounds amid widespread cuts in foreign aid and the U.S.’s withdrawal from global cooperation.
Berkley served as head of Gavi from 2011 to 2023, and now works in advisory roles for organizations, such as the Serum Institute of India, in areas such as vaccines, and other interventions for diseases impacting low- and middle-income countries.
His tenure at Gavi included a tumultuous period where there was extraordinary need for international solidarity and cooperation: The COVID-19 pandemic. This cooperation was present in some ways as countries banded together to create COVAX, the world’s attempt at vaccine equity — which Berkley led. But in other ways, it fell completely flat, including when wealthy countries hoarded vaccines.
It is a deadly disease linked to high temperatures, airborne dust, and overcrowded living conditions – some of the very conditions that climate change threatens to exacerbate . It caused an estimated 250,000 deaths in 2019, ranks among the top killers of young children, and can leave survivors with brain damage and hearing loss.
This disease is bacterial meningococcal meningitis, and it can appear anywhere at any time. But it disproportionately affects the Meningitis Belt, which stretches across 26 countries in Africa and is home to hundreds of millions of people. Each year, this region experiences hot and dusty conditions that can enable meningitis to spread, and every 5-12 years, has devastating epidemics causing massive disease.
The good news? Meningitis can be defeated. In fact, the world managed to effectively eliminate the most common cause in the Meningitis Belt: meningitis A, where not a single case of that strain has been reported since 2017.
As we mark World Meningitis Day on October 5, we should work to build on this remarkable success by following a World Health Organization (WHO) road map that lays out what needs to be done to eliminate meningitis as a public health threat by 2030. But achieving this requires us to act together and decide to dedicate resources to preventing new cases and outbreaks, including deploying the most state-of-the-art vaccines, investing in diagnosis, treatment, and surveillance, and doing all we can to support people who survive meningitis. Doing so by 2030 would prevent nearly a million deaths and 800,000 people from living with the devastating consequences of infection.
First, prevention. Vaccines are available to prevent bacterial meningitis, and it was the widespread deployment of MenAfriVac®, a vaccine developed by the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP), a partnership between WHO, Serum Institute of India, and PATH, that helped effectively eliminate meningitis A in the Meningitis Belt.
Other strains of meningitis are rising, and may be moving into the ecological niche that meningitis A used to fill, but new tools are available. The MenFive® vaccine protects against a broader range of five strains including meningitis A. It has received WHO prequalification and has been recommended for use in the Meningitis Belt by the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization, which encouraged countries to switch to the newer vaccine.
Nigeria is leading the way with support from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, becoming the first country to launch a vaccination campaign with MenFive® in response to an epidemic and is now considering introducing it routinely to prevent cases and epidemics. More countries should follow suit and build on Nigeria’s leadership by integrating the vaccine into their routine immunization programmes to ensure long-term protection against meningitis. Effectively eliminating meningococcal meningitis, A involved vaccination efforts across 24 countries in the Meningitis Belt. A similarly comprehensive campaign to roll out a vaccine that provides broader coverage against growing strains is needed to help save more lives.
Prevention is an important step, but not the final one. Rapid diagnosis and treatment with antibiotics are key for a disease that can kill within 24 hours. Diagnostics are available but have their limitations, especially in the resource-limited environments found in many Meningitis Belt countries, where health workers may not have access to the necessary training or tools. More affordable, simpler, and rapid point of care tests are needed to help save as many lives as possible.
Beyond diagnosis, bacterial meningitis can be treated with antibiotics, but certain medicines may not always be available or appropriate depending on the nature of the infection. Updated treatment guidelines are needed, especially given the growing global threat of antimicrobial resistance.
In addition, improved surveillance is needed to address a persistent lack of information. Without detection, outbreak response efforts, including mass vaccination campaigns, may be delayed, and it is difficult to understand how different strains of the disease are evolving.
Finally, we must help care for survivors, one of every five of whom lives with severe issues like brain damage, and hearing and vision loss. Rehabilitative care can be prohibitively expensive or simply not available at all. Health workers need to be trained and equipped to help survivors navigate their lives.
There is much to be done to eliminate meningitis by 2030. But thankfully, we know it is possible. The effective elimination of meningitis A in the meningitis belt shows that it can be done, and the WHO road map points the way. The science and the know-how exist, but we still must dedicate the will and resources. Lives depend on it.
Seth Berkley, MD, is an Adjunct Professor at the Pandemic Center, Brown University School of Public Health and an advisor to numerous technology and vaccine companies including the Serum Institute of India. He served as CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance from 2011-2023.
Samba O. Sow, MD, MSc, FASTMH, is the Directeur Général CVD-Mali. He served as Minister of Health and Public Hygiene for Mali from 2017-2019.
