The world's richest man is giving away more of his money to fightdiseases in the world's poorest countries. The Bill and MelindaGates Foundation recently announced a gift of seven hundred fiftymillion dollars. The money will go, over ten years, to the GlobalAlliance for Vaccines and Immunization through its Vaccine Fund.
The gift will support national programs in seventy-two countriesto protect children against several diseases.
The Gates Foundation also gave seven hundred fifty milliondollars to the Vaccine Fund in nineteen ninety-nine. These are thelargest grants the foundation has made yet.
Bill Gates is chairman of Microsoft, which makes the operatingsystem on most personal computers.
Another Gates Foundation gift announced last month will go tomalaria research. Nearly forty-three million dollars will helpsupport what is described as the first non-profit drug company inthe United States.
The company, OneWorld Health, will work with Professor JayKeasling at the University of California, Berkeley. He hopes tocreate a so-called bacteria factory at the Lawrence BerkeleyNational Laboratory to grow artemisinin. This is the medicine thatthe World Health Organization considers the most promising new drugto fight malaria.
It is now made from a plant that grows in Asia. But the drug isin short supply. The goal is to grow artemisinin another way, in alaboratory, to provide a low-cost new cure for malaria.
The gift happened to be announced a week before the death of theman considered the father of modern malaria research. WilliamTrager, an American, was ninety-four years old.
William Trager found a way to grow the most deadly form ofmalaria in a laboratory. Yet, almost thirty years later, scientistsare still working on a vaccine to prevent the disease. The W.H.O.says mosquitoes spread malaria to about three million people peryear. More than one million of them die. Most who die are youngchildren in Africa.
In Senegal, a two-day music event by African artists is beingorganized to support the Roll Back Malaria Partnership. That is aninternational effort to cut the number of malaria cases in the worldin half by two thousand ten. The concert is planned for Marchtwelfth and thirteenth in Dakar.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written by JillMoss. I'm Gwen Outen.