UNICEF: Medical supplies
UNICEF’s Vaccine Independence Initiative helps low- and middle-income countries purchase critical medical supplies using domestic budgets.
Since 2023, we have supported the initiative through a $50m procurement guarantee.
© UNICEF/UNI409319/Brown
The challenge
Public health
UNICEF’s Vaccine Independence Initiative (VII) is a financing and procurement facility to support low- and middle-income countries using national resources to purchase critical medical supplies. It helps governments manage temporary cash shortfalls by accessing a revolving fund through UNICEF. This ensures children and families do not miss out on essential health supplies due to temporary cash shortfalls.
VII is a particularly important vehicle for governments procuring without support from a global health donor such as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Where the release of funding from multilateral banks or national budgets is delayed, the regular supply of vaccines and treatments is often interrupted.
Market situation
The VII is increasingly important, especially to middle-income countries which lack regular access to donor-funded procurement, but may not have the procurement systems or negotiating clout to secure reliable supplies and affordable prices on the open market.
Support for the VII in the form of a MedAccess guarantee expands the facility’s resources. It also gives flexibility to undertake surge procurement for emerging disease outbreaks, climate-related crises, humanitarian crises and immunisation programmes.
Impact to date
In 2025, our guarantee supported:
prefinancing of
$226m
worth of health products
across
35
countries
The product
UNICEF’s VII programme was initially focused on vaccines but has expanded to cover a variety of lifesaving medical supplies including:
- diagnostics
- oxygen
- treatments
- and clinical supplies.
The partnership
MedAccess provided a $50m procurement guarantee to UNICEF until the end of 2030.
The core function of the guarantee is to support UNICEF to engage in procurement that will make health products more affordable and accessible.
This will achieve market-shaping impact at scale, reaching multiple products and populations.
MedAccess first provided a guarantee for VII in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic to accelerate access to essential health products in countries at risk of being shut out of scarce supplies. This guarantee was extended for an additional year in 2021. MedAccess and UNICEF entered into a new $10 million procurement guarantee agreement for VII in 2023. This guarantee was increased to $30 million in 2024 and ran until 2025, succeeded in 2026 by the current $50 million commitment which runs until 2030.
Impact projections
Our partnership with UNICEF enables continued procurement of essential health products to bridge short-term funding gaps which might otherwise lead to supply shortages and stock-outs.
Pre-financing means countries can expedite the delivery of essential products to tackle pressing health needs, accelerating availability of supply by four to six months.
