Bill and Melinda Gates announced?on Friday that their foundation will commit 10 billion US dollars over the next 10 years to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the world's poorest countries.

"We must make this the decade of vaccines," said Bill Gates at the ongoing World Economic Forum annual meeting. "Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before."

Bill and Melinda Gates said that significantly scaling up the delivery of life-saving vaccines in developing countries to 90 percent coverage, including new vaccines to prevent severe diarrhea and pneumonia, could prevent the deaths of some 7.6 million children under 5 from 2010-2019.

The couple said that an additional 1.1 million children could be saved with the rapid introduction of a malaria vaccine beginning in 2014, bringing the total number of potential lives saved to 8.7 million.

The new funding announced is in addition to the 4.5 billion dollars that the Gates Foundation has already committed to vaccine research, development and delivery to date across its entire disease portfolio since its inception.

The couple also said that billions more are needed from other donors to achieve the goal of 90 percent coverage of childhood immunization.