BRITAIN will donate an additional £814m to vaccinate more than 80m children against diseases like pneumonia and diarrhoea, David Cameron announced.

The Prime Minister said the money would help save 1.4m lives in the developing world over the next five years.

He was speaking at the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi) conference in London, where world leaders, charities, private companies and philanthropists including Microsoft’s Bill Gates were discussing how to generate the funds to ensure children receive protection against potentially fatal diseases. Mr Cameron told the conference: “Britain will play its full part.

“In addition to our existing support for Gavi, we will provide £814m of new funding up to 2015.

“This will help vaccinate over 80m children and save 1.4m lives.

“That is one child vaccinated every two seconds for five years. It is one child’s life saved every two minutes.”

Mr Gates later told the conference that his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was pledging an additional $1bn over the next five years to help the vaccination campaign.

Mr Cameron acknowledged that the increased cash for vaccinations – part of the UK’s goal of devoting 0.7% of national income to aid by 2013 – would be “controversial” at a time of cuts in spending on public services at home.

He told the conference: “At a time when we are making spending cuts at home, what we are doing today and the way we are protecting our aid budget is controversial.

“Some people say we simply can’t afford spending money on overseas aid right now, that we should get our own house in order before worrying about other people’s problems.”

But the Prime Minister rejected these arguments: “I think there is a strong moral case for keeping our promises to the world’s poorest and helping them, even when we face challenges at home,” he said.