They say money can’t buy happiness, but somebody ought to be happy that Bill Gates and his Gates Foundation are putting up $250 million more in the name of global health.
The foundation is more than doubling its funding for the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative. This will put the total amount of money contributed by the Gates Foundation up to $450 million.
The Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative was started in 2003 to develop solutions to 14 major scientific challenges that, if solved, could potentially lead to breakthrough advances in global health.
“I’m an optimist,” said Gates in a speech to the World Health Assembly. “We have a historic chance to build a world where all people, no matter where they’re born, can have the preventive care, vaccines, and treatments they need to live a healthy life.”
Of the billions of dollars spent worldwide each year to develop new vaccines, drugs, and other health tools, only a fraction is focused on diseases that primarily affect developing countries.
According to a press release, this summer, the initiative will announce its first round of grants to fund an array of innovative research and development efforts, selected from more than 1,500 proposed projects from 75 countries.
“There is a tragic inequity between the health of people in the developed world and the health of those in the rest of the world,” Gates said. “I am here to talk about how the world, working together, can dramatically reduce this inequity. Never before have we had anything close to the tools we have today to both spread awareness of the problem and discover and deliver solutions.”
Gates said that the foundation decided to double funding for the Grand Challenges initiative in order to fund more of the high-quality research proposals it has received from the international scientific community.
Chris is a staff writer for murdok. Visit murdok for the latest ebusiness news.
