Sania Nishtar, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, discusses why prioritising investments in immunisation can protect future generations from growing health threats and help open a new chapter in global prosperity.
In this special lecture, Dr Nishtar will reflect on the history of vaccines, which have saved six lives every minute over the past 50 years, making them one of humanity’s greatest and most cost-effective achievements and a towering example of what can be achieved when people, governments and international partners work together towards a unified goal. Nowhere has this collaboration been more exemplified than through the work of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance which, since 2000 has protected over a billion children, helping cut child mortality rates in the countries it supports by half.
Looking to the future, vaccines hold the promise to have an even greater impact on people’s health and lives. New vaccine introductions are helping make inroads against two major killers in low-income countries - malaria and cervical cancer - while innovative methods such as drone technology are being deployed to reach communities that were previously beyond reach. Each of these advances bring economic and societal benefits aside from the obvious public health ones.
This lecture will consider the future of immunisation against the backdrop of the many challenges that stand in the way of this historic progress, including climate change, conflict and economic instability. These are each having an outsized impact on lower income countries, while the increasing threat of infectious diseases and future pandemics further threaten to slow, stop, or even reverse progress toward improved health and economic development for communities.
Meet our speaker and chair
Dr Sania Nishtar (@SaniaNishtar) is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Dr Nishtar, most recently a Senator in her home country of Pakistan, joined Gavi as its CEO on 18 March 2024. A trained medical doctor, Dr Nishtar has built an outstanding career over 30 years as a national and global leader. In Pakistan’s national government, she served between 2018 and 2022 as Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation, a role with the status of a Federal Minister. During this time, she founded a social protection programme and chaired the Council on Poverty Alleviation and the Benazir Income Support Program. In 2013, during Pakistan’s Caretaker Government, she served as a Federal Minister with responsibility for re-establishing the country’s Ministry of Health among other roles, winning acclaim for transparency and accountability during her time in office.
Professor Elias Mossialos is Cheng Yu Tung Chair in Global Health and Director of LSE Health. He was the founding Head of the Department of Health Policy. His primary research focus revolves around health systems and policy, with a particular emphasis on issues related to healthcare financing, accessibility, quality, regulation, pharmaceutical policies, AMR, and cancer care and policy. He has developed the Options Market for Antibiotics, an incentive scheme to stimulate research and development (R&D). His work has been translated into Japanese, Russian, Greek, and Spanish, comprising over 300 publications across the fields of public policy, health policy and economics, and political science.
More about this event
This event is hosted by LSE Health (@LSEHealthPolicy). We are a world-leading multidisciplinary research centre with over 20 years of experience advancing global research in health policy and health economics.
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