Excepts from:
washingtonpost.com With Gates's Help, Immunization Initiative Surges
Global Health Effort Brings Hope to Poorest Countries
By Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 14, 2003; Page A01
Later this week, in a remote village in Mozambique called Manhica, a
doctor plans to plunge a needle containing a new vaccine into a toddler's
arm. The doctor likely to perform the task is Pascoal Manuel Mocumbi, and
he is also, as it happens, the prime minister of that African country, due
on hand for a moment rich in symbolism. The injection will launch the
largest test ever of whether science can develop a vaccine against
malaria, one of humanity's great scourges, killer of a million children
every year.
The test, to involve close to 2,000 African children, is more than a
scientific milestone. It will be one of the most visible achievements to
date of a new international initiative that has melded the ambition of the
world's richest man, the economic interests of the drug industry and the
frustrations of public-health experts into a broad global assault on
childhood disease.
When Bill Gates, the Microsoft Corp. founder, announced in the late 1990s
that he would spend part of his vast fortune to improve the world's
faltering immunization system, the move was greeted skeptically. What
could a software mogul contribute to solving a problem that had long vexed
the world's public-health experts?
But Gates brought something to the picture those experts had never been
able to marshal: serious money. The result has been a grand alliance
between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the world's top
public-health agencies, aimed at solving problems that cost the lives of
more than 4 million children every year.
Even with Gates in the vanguard, it is unclear whether the world will come
up with enough money to do what ultimately needs to be done. But three
years on, the early achievements of the alliance are becoming plain to see.
Vaccination rates, stagnant for much of the 1990s, are rising. New
vaccines, some of them far more expensive than anything the international
community has previously been willing to supply to poor children, are
reaching villages across the planet. Funds spent on immunization have
jumped in some countries to nearly $10 a child from less than $1. Many
countries have joined the campaign only in the past year or two, but
already, newer vaccines have been administered to more than 30 million
children.
Mitayo Potosi
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