Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya Foundation

Rvf's major initiative to provide safe water for drinking and personal hygiene to over 230,000 schoolchildren in gaza, made possible by a grant from the government of the uae, was forced to be suspended in october 2023 owing to the outbreak of war. Access to safe drinking water is a global public health priority. In the gaza strip, home to over 2 million people, there is an immediate need for potable water, especially in schools. 125 unrwa schools in gaza were to be equipped with desalination units and renewable electric power systems to provide drinking water and promote hygiene education. Each school was to have its own desalination unit equipped with a solar power supply to avoid reliance on gaza's weak electric grid. Rvf-led training of school staff and students to build good hygiene habits during the school day as well as at home was designed to help prevent disease transmission. A total of three tenders awarded to local suppliers in gaza before october 2023 to install and maintain the imported state-of-the-art desalination units supported on-the-ground capacity. Given the scope of the destruction in gaza as a result of the ongoing war, it is impossible to know how this program will be executed once the war ends. Rvf is in regular contact with the government of the uae, who will work with us to assess the next steps at that time.

Rvf works in partnership with local governments to create sustainable public health programs for children. The largest service accomplishments are programs introducing modern vaccines for children into the national routine vaccination schedules in middle income countries (mics) and publishing the epidemiological results of the programs in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The vaccination programs are implemented entirely by local health care workers, thereby building local capacity and ownership from the beginning, and are fully sustained by the host governments within 3 years of inception. Following the rvf-initiated rotavirus vaccination program for all infants in gaza and the west bank - approximately 135,000 babies annually which continues to be fully sustained by the palestinian ministry of health, rvf, with financing from the bill & melinda gates Foundation, is conducting surveillance documenting the impact of the rotavirus vaccine on the disease burden through the year 2025. The results of the first phase of the surveillance were published in the peer-reviewed journal vaccine. In egypt rvf has launched an initiative to introduce the rotavirus vaccine into the national immunization schedule for children and to transfer the technology to manufacture the vaccine in the country. As part of the initiative rvf has completed its baseline study of rotavirus disease in egypt. The study was financed by the bill & melinda gates Foundation and published in the egyptian pharmaceutical journal.