A New Decade For Vaccines?

by Te-Ping Chen · 2010-01-29 15:37:00 UTC
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There's been a fantastic string of headlines on vaccines these past few days. On Tuesday, Bill Gates told the BBC that a partially effective vaccine for malaria -- which kills a child every 30 seconds -- could be developed in the next three years. On Wednesday, researchers announced that a new vaccine for rotavirus (which causes fatal diarrhea in children) could save two million children in the next ten years.

All those stories culminated today, with Gates dropping a $10 billion bomb.

That's the amount that the Gates Foundation will be spending in the next decade to research and distribute new vaccines -- an extraordinary figure that more than doubles what the foundation has given in the previous ten years. (That's right: $10 billion. Not a typo.)

The Chronicle of Philanthropy notes that $10 billion dollars is the largest amount of money ever given by a foundation. Seen differently, it's as though the entire Ford Foundation -- which is worth about that amount -- decided to devote itself exclusively to tackling some of the least glamorous diseases in the developing world.

To give some perspective, back in 1993, just $166 million was being spent on research into malaria. That figure rose to $323 million by 2004 (funds from the Gates Foundation and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease accounted for two-thirds of that amount). Right now, about 80% of children worldwide get vaccinated against childhood diseases such as measles, whopping cough and tetanus. Gates's goal is to raise that amount to 90%.

That $10 billion doesn't mean that the Gates Foundation is devoting any less to other signature projects around the world, such as improved crops or assistance to schools. Instead, both Gates and Warren Buffet will step up their annual gifts to the foundation.

In his annual letter released this Sunday, Gates continued to make the case, as he has before, that rich governments "need to spend more on research and development." (In 2006, the U.S. government spent $35 million to research a malaria vaccine through the National Institutes of Health -- less than the cost of Bush's 2004 inauguration.) In the meantime, hats off to his foundation for once again leading the way.

Photo Credit: Andres Rueda

Te-Ping Chen Te-Ping Chen is a freelance writer and U.S. Truman Scholar whose writing has appeared in the Nation Magazine, the South China Morning Post magazine, Le Soir, and Slate.com.
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