The UK is committed to developing innovative financing mechanisms to raise additional resources to accelerate progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals.
The International Finance Facility (IFF) is still under development, but the pilot IFF for Immunisation (IFFIm) was launched in September 2005. It issued its first bonds on 7 November 2006, raising US$1 billion which is being channelled through the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI). These funds will support GAVI's vaccination and immunisation programmes in developing countries, allowing a major scaling-up of this important work.
IFFIm will raise a total of US$4 billion for immunisation over the next 10 years. The UK has committed a total of £1.38 billion to IFFIm over the next 20 years.