Calling for a new “decade of vaccines,” Bill and Melinda Gates today announced that their foundation will spend $10-billion over the next 10 years for the development and delivery of vaccines to impoverished people—the largest pledge ever by a grant maker to a specific cause.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, the couple said they hope the commitment would spur support by governments, corporations, and other donors for vaccinations efforts, such as the creation of new vaccines to curb severe diarrhea and pneumonia. Potentially, such a health push could save the lives of some 8.7 million children in Africa and other developing regions by 2019, the co-founders of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said.
“We’ve made vaccines our No. 1 priority at the Gates foundation because we’ve seen firsthand their incredible impact on children’s lives,” said Mrs. Gates.
Twice as Much
To be sure, vaccine programs are not a new area of support for the Seattle foundation. Historically they have been its top priority, and in the previous 10 years, Gates gave $4.5-billion to vaccination work. The Davos announcement essentially doubles the bet on the success of such health efforts.
As America’s largest foundation with $34-billion in assets, the Gates pledge dwarfs the grant making of other foundations.
For comparison, the pledge is more than all the money given to charity by 100 of the largest foundations, excluding Gates, in 2008. Indeed, the $10-billion pledge is nearly as large as the entire assets of the Ford Foundation, the second wealthiest foundation in America, which was worth $10.2-billion when its most-recent fiscal year ended on September 30, 2009.
Research and Delivery
At Davos, Mr. Gates said the new money would support a variety of projects, including basic research and finding new ways to get life-saving vaccines to people in remote parts of the world.
The software mogul emphasized that scientific innovations are needed to achieve the drop in child-mortality rates he and his wife hope for.
“Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries,” he said. “Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before.”
(The need for philanthropy to back breakthrough innovations in science and education was also a key theme of Mr. Gates’s annual letter, which he made public this week.)
Lives Saved
Since its establishment in 1999, a large portion of the Gates foundation’s vaccine grants have gone to the GAVI Alliance, which is also supported by the World Bank, governments, the United Nations, and others.
The alliance says it has vaccinated some 257 million children worldwide, preventing 5 million deaths.
While Gates-supported vaccination work has earned praise from global-health officials, some have suggested it has not reached as many children as reported.
In a 2008 study, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which also receives money from Gates, said that these programs have likely overestimate their success, in part because some countries receive a financial payment for each child they vaccinate.
Despite this, the study did say the programs have led to a steady increase in child-vaccination rates for diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough, protecting about 74 percent of the children in the developing world against these health problems.
Editor's note: This article has been corrected since its original publication online to correct the latest estimate of the Ford Foundation's wealth.
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Comments
1. bobbyvassallo - January 29, 2010 at 06:32 pm
Thank you Bill and Melinda. Finally, someone gets it! Anyone who joined that party condemning the Gates family for not doing more for humanity a decade or so ago, you may now excuse yourself. The Gates are doing things, and doing them right.
The simplest things we have in abundance in the US, just doesn't exist in Africa. When there, you see a child's simple cut, festered and oozing, simply because an over the counter remedy like tri-biotic cannot be found. The benefits from Bill and Melinda Gates' gift of vaccines, will pay dividends for decades. While the Red Cross and others spend billions in overhead each year, and billions on raising money, the Gates' have put their efforts in the right place.
I am extremely glad to see a commitment which will truly make a difference.
Bobby Vassallo
http://bobbyvassallo.org
2. anandktripathi - January 31, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Dear Bill,
Thanks a ton for your this generous support for the humanity. I hope some more rich people will follow the footsteps too. Here I have one more suggetion which may help the every human in the real. For me right now it would be much better if we try to improve the quality of life, biggest obstacle I can see in the process is big population. We won't be able to provide the quality living which we are suppose to with this big population, people will keep on suffering. You may able to make them healthy by providing vaccination but we are still too far from from providing the real vaccine which can save them from starvation, we won't be able to provide them the job by vaccine even the clean drinking water is not accessible to a large part of population. Till the time we won't start thinking about population we won't be able to sustain whatever progress we make. Our mother earth is already overburdened, global warming issue can be felt everywhere, people are jobless, people are starving. By providing vaccniation we will be bringing more and more human and they too will be competing for the very limited resources which we have for survival. Sooner or later the people will start fighting for already depleting resources and it will become like survival of the fittest. Population control is the need of the day, my words may sound too harsh but need of the day is job and food, not more competitor for that very limited resources. It may not seem to be problem for the people who are super rich because their knowledge for the real issue comes from the documentary shown on TV or articles published in magazines, but after 100 or 200 years they are going to feel that problem and things will be out of control that time. Our Dear Earth can bring that balance by using real super powers like earthquake, tsunami, katrina and there will be more and more powerful weapons to bring that balance but the question is, should we wait for that to happen or should we start working for that now.
Then also I am glad to see your commitment for the betterment of humankind and I hope my point too will be considered.
Anand