By Megan Scudellari

In December, health leaders in Nicaragua celebrated the integration of a vaccine against pneumococcal disease into their country’s routine immunization program. It’s no small achievement: pneumococcal disease kills more than 800,000 children under five years of age every year worldwide.

What’s perhaps more notable is that the change was made possible by an advance market commitment (AMC), a first-of-its-kind initiative devised by the GAVI Alliance in which donors provide funds to incentivize pharmaceutical companies to develop and distribute vaccines for the world’s poorest nations.

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