GSK

Since 2013, we've been working in partnership with GSK. In 2023, we renewed our partnership commitment to help protect the health of children, with a focus on Nigeria and Ethiopia.

‘Zero dose’ children – those who have never had any routine vaccination – are the most likely to contract diseases such as polio, measles and cholera. As vaccination rates drop, these preventable diseases are appearing in places where they haven’t been seen for decades and can be life-threatening.

Nowhere has this been felt more starkly than in Africa. The continent has the highest number of zero dose children in the world – 8.7 million. More than a third live in Nigeria and Ethiopia alone.

Led by communities and working with local health centres, government and other partners, we’re aiming to develop, pilot and implement effective approaches to:

• Improve the quality of vaccination services, making sure they can keep running even in a crisis – whether that’s training local health workers, or providing solar refrigerators to keep vaccines cold on the journey to health centres and communities
• Make sure vaccination services are more inclusive and can be accessed by all children – using data to track which communities might be missing out on vaccines and helping to reduce the time families spend travelling to get their children’s vaccines
• Work with ‘missed communities’ – where there are many zero dose children – to raise awareness of the importance of vaccinations and debunk misinformation, to encourage more families to take up the immunisations on offer
• Collaborate with government, community groups and national and global NGOs, for more coordinated, comprehensive and effective vaccination campaigns.

GSK demonstrate a clear commitment to strengthening access to healthcare around the world and focus on sharing their scientific expertise with external partners to tackle the healthcare needs of people globally. By continuing to work collaboratively, there is the opportunity to further build on our commitments and take even greater steps to overcome some of the most frequent barriers to accessing healthcare in some of the world’s poorest communities. 

Together we have:

• Supported more than 3.5 million children across 51 countries 
• Trained 38,000 health workers and supported 21,000 community health workers 
• Immunised more than 240,000 children under five against preventable diseases  
• Treated more than 807,000 cases of children for malaria, pneumonia or diarrhoea  
• Raised £5.6 million through GSK employees in over 70 countries
• Supported the Green Climate Fund and an Anticipatory Action to prepare for and lessen the impact of climate-related disasters.

Learn about some of our other innovative and strategic partnerships.