At a meeting in New Delhi, India, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization said its distribution of single-use syringes has protected millions of children from infection with diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis. The syringes automatically disable themselves after one use, and GAVI said it has distributed 1.214 billion of them in developing nations where syringes are often reused, leading to the spread of disease.

An estimated 17 percent of injections worldwide are administered with unsterilized, reused syringes, according to the World Health Organization, which blames the practice for a "silent epidemic" of 22 million hepatitis infections and 250,000 HIV infections each year. India has both one of the world's biggest injection programs and possibly the poorest record of injection safety. About 70 percent of the nation's 4 billion injections annually are administered improperly or with contaminated syringes, the World Bank has reported.

Since its 2000 launch by the UN, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, governments and the vaccine industry, GAVI says its work has prevented more than 670,000 premature deaths. Vaccine-preventable infections kill about 2 million people every year, chiefly in developing nations. The conference concludes Friday.

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