Bills Gates makes $10 bn vaccines pledge

DAVOS, SWITZERLAND: Philanthropists Bill Gates and Melinda Gates to day announced that their foundation will commit US$ 10 billion over the next 10 years to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the world’s poorest countries.

“We must make this the decade of vaccines,” said Bill Gates, speaking at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. “Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries.”

Bill Gates and Melinda said that increased investment in vaccines by governments and the private sector could help developing countries dramatically reduce child mortality by the end of the decade, and they called for others to help fill critical financing gaps in both research funding and childhood immunization programs.

“We must make this the decade of vaccines,” said Bill Gates. “Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before.”

Melinda Gates said vaccines are a miracle - with just a few doses, they can prevent deadly diseases for a lifetime. “We’ve made vaccines our number-one priority at the Gates Foundation because we’ve seen firsthand their incredible impact on children’s lives,” she added.

The foundation used a model developed by a consortium led by the Institute of International Programs at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to project the potential impact of vaccines on childhood deaths over the next 10 years, said a statement.

By significantly scaling up the delivery of life-saving vaccines in developing countries to 90 percent coverage—including new vaccines to prevent severe diarrhea and pneumonia—the model suggests that we could prevent the deaths of some 7.6 million children under 5 from 2010-2019.

The foundation also estimates that an additional 1.1 million children could be saved with the rapid introduction of a malaria vaccine beginning in 2014, bringing the total number of potential lives saved to 8.7 million.

If additional vaccines are developed and introduced in this decade - such as for tuberculosis - even more lives could be saved, the statement added.