Quotes from Seth Berkley

For just a few dollars a dose, vaccines save lives and help reduce poverty. Unlike medical treatment, they provide a lifetime of protection from deadly and debilitating disease. They are safe and effective. They cut healthcare and treatment costs, reduce the number of hospital visits, and ensure healthier children, families and communities.

I was a serial monogamist.

You can't stop wars to build tertiary teaching hospitals, but you can say, 'Let's stop for a couple of days to immunise the kids.' It has been done.

The pathway to a more sustainable future for all children must include access to the basic building blocks of good health, including nutrition, water, and immunizations.

As demonstrated by the emergence of the Mexican swine flu in the U.S., infectious diseases have little respect for borders; helping developing countries detect and deal with their diseases is the surest way for us to protect ourselves from new and potentially devastating epidemics.

Historically, industrial revolutions haven't been kind to poor people. Despite the potential benefits technology can offer, the immediate impact on the lowest-paid members of society has often been negative.

Land degradation, rising sea levels, famine, and conflict will continue to drive people from their homes and towards cities, with megacities like Mexico City and Lagos becoming increasingly common in some of the poorest parts of the world.

Without strong health systems in place, the higher the population density, the more difficult it becomes to prevent and control outbreaks, and not just because of the increased risk of contagion.

I wish we could have state-of-the-art hospitals in every corner of the earth... but realistically, it's going to be a while before that can happen. But we can immunise every kid on earth, and we can prevent these diseases. It's only a matter of political will, a little bit of money and some systems to do it.

Leadership is about vision and responsibility, not power.

The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting is the perfect place for a dialogue that brings together industry, civil society, U.N. agencies, and countries around a shared response to the challenge of protecting children against vaccine-preventable illness.

In large part, thanks to widespread immunization, the number of young children dying each year has declined significantly, from approximately 14 million in 1979 to slightly less than eight million in 2010.

No country in the post-colonial era has thrived without first building its capacity to conduct scientific research.

By recognizing that infectious disease is not some faraway exotic issue but a global problem, and by sharing the responsibility for its prevention, diagnosis, and control, the whole world will be a lot safer.

Healthy children are more likely to attend school and are better able to learn. Healthy workers are more productive. More productive economies mean greater stability in developing countries and improved security in the West.

Vaccines are extremely cost-effective, giving kids a healthy start in life and supporting the economic and educational foundations of entire communities. They directly lead to a healthy workforce, which is so critical to long-term development and prosperity in all countries.

GAVI works collaboratively with the private sector - from investment banks to vaccine suppliers to corporations to members of the Forbes 400 - to find new and better ways to raise and apply resources and broaden the base of participants in global health.

Science is one of the comparative advantages of our knowledge-based economy, and focusing on our prowess in providing better tools to address diseases of poverty is one of the best forms of foreign aid.

In an increasingly complex world, we have a simple and bold vision that all children should have the opportunity to grow up healthy.

History will not judge HIV/AIDS kindly... the harshest words will be reserved for how the world responded, or rather failed to respond, to the epidemic.

Now, you might think of flu as just a really bad cold, but it can be a death sentence. Every year, 36,000 people in the United States die of seasonal flu. In the developing world, the data is much sketchier, but the death toll is almost certainly higher.

Yellow fever outbreaks are not uncommon. But, as with other infectious diseases, when they occur in urban areas, they can play out very differently - not least in terms of the speed and scale at which they can spread.

Investments in immunization yield a rate of return on a par with educating our children - and higher than nearly any other development intervention.

We know that children who are healthier do not require medical treatment or care, both of which cost time and money. So, by avoiding illness, infants have a greater chance of growing into healthier children who are able to attend school and become more productive members of society.