In 2003 Bill and Melinda Gates attend to a baby who is taking part in a malaria intervention treatment program at the Manhica Research Centre and hospital in Manhica, Mozambique. Dr F Xavier Gomez-Olive, centre, explains the treatment program. AFP
Malaria Vaccine Aided by Gates Foundation Donation
By Justin Gillis Washington Post Staff Writer
NEW YORK -- The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said Sunday that it would sharply increase its investment in malaria research, awarding $258.3 million in grants to hasten ways of preventing and treating the disease.
Counting the new money, the Gates Foundation will soon be providing more than a third of the world's annual research budget for malaria, eclipsing the U.S. government as the leading funder of such work.
The grants, to be spent over five years, will bring worldwide malaria research to about $375 million a year. That is a quarter of the sum that men in wealthy countries spend annually buying Viagra.
Malaria kills an estimated 1.2 million people a year, the large majority of them African children who have yet to reach their sixth birthday, and the toll has risen sharply over the past two decades.
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft Corp. and creator of the foundation that bears his name, called the dearth of malaria funding "a disgrace." The Gates Foundation, the world's largest charitable organization with nearly $29 billion in assets, has launched a broad assault on global health problems.
"It's really a tragedy that the world has done so little to stop this disease that kills 2,000 African children every day," Gates said in a conference call with reporters. "If those children were in rich countries, we'd have headlines, we'd take action, and we wouldn't rest until every child was protected."
The grants were announced just ahead of a global health conference here, sponsored by Time magazine and the Gates Foundation, that aims to put a spotlight on malaria and other diseases of poor countries.
The new grants are aimed at speeding research on methods to prevent malaria, such as improved insecticides to combat the mosquitoes that carry it, and on medicines to treat people who contract the ailment.
One grant, for $107.6 million, will fund accelerated work on what could be the world's first-ever malaria vaccine, under development in Rixensart, Belgium, by the biologicals division of GlaxoSmithKline PLC, the huge London drug company.
The accelerated timetable means that vaccine could be ready in as little as six years.
Research to date has suggested the vaccine could conceivably cut malaria deaths in half.Jean-Pierre Garnier, chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, said in the conference call with Gates that his company will try to make the injection more effective.
He pledged to seek a vaccine "that can be priced at a minimum cost and produced in very large quantities" for distribution in the poorest countries.
Urbane Analysis: This is in addition to $168 million donated two years ago by the Gates Foundation to combat malaria - a disease which kills more children every year than the AIDS virus. The Gates have good reason to be frustrated by the lack of coordinated funding - and to voice ethical outrage about it as they have. When visiting orphanages in Kampala, Uganda - it is striking how so many of the child-victims of abandonment are malaria victims - a disease which can leave survivors in a range of permanently disabled states - up to and including severe mental retardation. Malaria and AIDS are just part of the panoply of preventable problems in Uganda - where it is shocking that a readily preventable disease, Cholera, is part of the urban Kampala situation as well. But the government intransigence in Uganda is astounding - AIDS drugs are blithely refused - while basic health programs and investment in bleach to prevent cholera in slums are nowhere to be found.
The good news about work against Malaria is that governments which choose to engage on the problem can have enormous success - such as this effort in partnership (noted in the New York Times) - between South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland with foreign mining companies operating there.
The Urbane R is asking why Bill and Melinda have to be doing the "heavy lifting" alone on (seemingly) every good work on this planet - the Gates Foundation could be leveraging their efforts with partnership grants involving scores of other countries. And with contributions by individuals participating in this effort through outreach to organizations like World Vision - which is an excellent way to build public awareness and broader support for these efforts.
Finally, other members of the gazillionaire club (including Larry Ellison and Paul Allen, are you listening? Wealth is about more than SETI and sailboats...) might want to seriously join with their colleagues Bill and Melinda - and explore the joy of selfless giving on behalf of the most poor like the Gates have. And see what kind of difference they can make with their lives.
The Gates have clearly gotten onto the understanding (in a big way) that providing a higher level of health confidence to desperately poor people in developing countries will render long term benefits like increased educational attainment and a lower birthrate. Healthcare improves the total situation, now can we talk about how educating girls does the same thing? They are doing an awesome job of sharing their wealth with those who need it most - they might really consider that the other half of this equation is sharing their knowledge in order to impact a new generation of outreach. And to think expansively about doing this - developing a couple billion individual partners in their work would be a good start.
No comments:
Post a Comment