2012 John Ring LaMontagne Memorial Lecture

Speaker: Seth Berkley, M.D.
CEO, GAVI Alliance
Title: Getting the Miracle of Vaccines to Those Who Most Need Them
Date: Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Time: 2:00 pm–3:00 pm
Location: Lipsett Amphitheater (inside Building 10/Clinical Center on the NIH campus), Bethesda, Maryland

Broadening Access to Vaccines is Focus of LaMontagne Lecture

Universal access to immunization has been an elusive goal for many decades. A desire to overcome the obstacles to this goal fuels the GAVI Alliance, founded in 2000 with the aim of saving children’s lives and protecting people’s health by increasing access to immunization in developing countries.
“During the past decade, new vaccines have been rolled out in developing nations within a year of their licensure in the industrialized world—a far cry from past delays of 15 years or more,” says Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of the GAVI Alliance. Nevertheless, he notes, a child dies of a vaccine-preventable disease every 20 seconds, and one in every five children remains unimmunized.
Berkley will describe the challenges and successes of bringing lifesaving vaccines to people who live in the poorest countries during the 2012 John Ring LaMontagne Memorial Lecture sponsored by NIAID. Titled “Getting the Miracle of Vaccines to Those Who Most Need Them,” the lecture will take place in the Lipsett Amphitheater, Bldg. 10, on Tuesday, May 22, at 2 p.m.
A physician and epidemiologist, Berkley has devoted his career to improving international public health primarily through vaccines. Before joining the GAVI Alliance in 2011, Berkley was the founding president and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), a non-governmental organization dedicated to aggressively pursuing novel approaches to AIDS vaccine development.
“Overcoming the obstacles to universal access to immunization will require the political will to make vaccines a right for every child, innovations in vaccine delivery, and support from finance ministries to prioritize vaccines in national budgets,” he says.
The LaMontagne lecture honors contributions to NIH and public health made by Dr. LaMontagne during his 30-year career with NIAID. He earned international recognition, numerous accolades and widespread admiration for his distinguished leadership and accomplishments in fighting emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. He served as NIAID deputy director from 1998 until his untimely death in 2004.
View the videocast of the lecture.