Tagged: vaccines

In 2009, Seattle-based PATH, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, launched a project aimed at combating cervical cancer in India by introducing the HPV vaccine.

The vaccine program didn’t work out as planned.

How were world governments, under constant pressure to cut back on foreign aid due to the economic downturn, convinced to support the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization to the tune of $4.3 billion?

Bill Gates and his foundation likely had some influence, sure. He’s long been a big proponent of vaccines. But even the Microsoft billionaire can’t always get governments to do what he wants. That’s where his friend Bono and the ONE Campaign come in.

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In an interview with the UK's Daily Mail, Bill Gates talked family, friends and global health. The world’s second-richest man was striking in his normalcy, sharing how he is teased by his kids, works too much and isn’t worried about a personal legacy.

"Legacy," he told the Dail Mail, "is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy. If people look and see that childhood deaths dropped from nine million a year to four million because of our investment, then wow!”

Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization – Major public and private donors achieved a milestone in global health today by committing funding to immunize more than 250 million of the world’s poorest children against life-threatening diseases by 2015 and prevent more than four million premature deaths.

Vaccines are “miracles,” Bill Gates likes to say, because of their power to prevent death and disease so simply and at such a low cost.

Today, governments and international donors (the Gates Foundation chief among them) agreed to boost funding for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization initiative by $4.3 billion.

In this time of economic recession, GAVI’s success at fund-raising is extraordinary. However, the question must be asked: Does GAVI strike the hardest bargain with drug companies, getting the needed vaccines at the lowest cost?

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Record numbers of parents in the Northwest are seeking waivers from mandatory child immunization requirements. The trend alarms public health officials. They say it creates increased risk for disease outbreaks. Washington, Oregon, and Idaho are all moving to sway vaccine skeptics.

All U.S. states require parents to immunize their children before sending them to school.

Bill and Melinda Gates are big believers in vaccines and in the benefit of eradicating, rather than simply controlling, those human diseases that have the potential for being completely wiped out.

Today, Gates and British Prime Minister David Cameron announced a combined new donation of $166 million in support of the global polio eradication campaign.

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