Cabinet has approved an annual contribution of 1 million US Dollars to the International Financing Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm) for the next 20 years.

IFFIm is an initiative of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) aimed at addressing childhood diseases in line with the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

A projected IFFIm investment of 4 billion US Dollars is expected to prevent 5 million child deaths between 2005 and 2015 and more than 5 million future adult deaths.

According to the facility, by investing the majority of resources upfront, this would increase significantly the flow of aid to countries for immunization programmes during the years up to 2015.

Meanwhile, South Africa has appealed to parents, guardians, caregivers and the public to ensure that children under the age of five are immunised to prevent childhood diseases.

The country is currently observing National Polio Eradication Week that ends on Sunday.

The department of health has set aside this week to raise awareness about the importance of immunisation to prevent childhood diseases.

It says childhood diseases such as measles and polio have potentially fatal complications especially in small children but can be prevented.

Vaccines to prevent these diseases are available free of charge at any public health clinic.

They are given to prevent Polio, Tuberculosis, Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Haemophilus Influenza type B, Hepatitis B and Measles.

In addition, South Africa has to reach the target the World Health Organisation (WHO) has set that 90 percent of children must be fully immunised by the time they turn one-year-old.

"Currently the overall routine immunisation coverage for South Africa is less than 80 percent and some districts are still lagging behind with less than 60 percent immunisation coverage," said the department.

While polio was last detected in South Africa in 1989, the department says however that as there are still cases of wild poliovirus anywhere in the world, the disease could easily be imported and spread within another polio free country if all children had not been fully vaccinated.