GORDON BROWN’S project to raise $4 billion (£2.3 billion) for a new African immunisation programme cleared its final hurdle yesterday.

Government borrowing for the scheme will not count against national accounts, the Office for National Statistics and Eurostat ruled. That will make it easier for countries with large debts to contribute to the scheme.

Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Sweden have all said they will donate and other countries may be persuaded to sign up too after yesterday’s ruling. The programme is jointly funded and developed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Health Organisation and Unicef. It aims to stamp out diseases including polio, hepatitis B, measles, diphtheria and yellow fever — major killers in Africa.

A Treasury spokesman welcomed the decision, saying it was a major step in the fight to eradicate diseases in Africa.

“Today’s decision is a major step forward for the new International Finance Facility for Immunisation that will provide an additional $4 billion dollars of urgently needed aid preventing 5 million child deaths before 2015 and a further five million deaths after 2015,” the spokesman said.

The decision to allow Government’s to fund the scheme “off the balance sheet” is a major boost for Mr Brown’s much more ambitious plans for an IFF to increase aid to Africa.

His scheme, designed to increase aid by £50 billion, lacks crucial support from the US, but other EU members have said they will back him if they can come up with a way to fund the scheme. Mr Brown has said he is prepared to ring-fence cash raised from the tax on airline tickets to fund the deal, and other EU countries are exploring whether they could introduce a similar levy.

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