Gates to Give

Yesterday, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced it will donate $17.6 million to ease the impact of the continuing global food crisis on the world’s poor.

From the Chronicles of Philanthropy

The largest grant, $10-million, will help the U.N. World Food Program feed young children and mothers in Niger, Cote d’Ivoire, and Burkina Faso.

The additional money will be split among Catholic Relief Services, Mercy Corps, and Oxfam America to provide food, jobs, and assistance to farmers in poor countries.

“The current global food crisis requires immediate action to feed people most at risk,” said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the foundation’s Global Development Program, in a statement.

“In the longer term,” she said, “since agriculture and the needs of small-scale farmers in the developing world have been increasingly neglected in recent decades, we need a significant reinvestment in agricultural development from donors and developing countries that focuses on helping small farmers boost their yields and increase their incomes.”

Bloomberg and Gates tackle Tobacco

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and philanthropist Bill Gates announced plans to raise $500 million for a campaign used to kick Big Tobacco – you guessed it – in the butt.

This is particularly significant for developing nations, as they are becoming popular targets for cigarette companies’ market demographic.

From the New York Times (Op-ed):

[Bloomberg and Gates’] target is a worthy one: tobacco companies and government-owned tobacco enterprises trying to addict hundreds of millions of new customers in the developing world as sales stagnate or shrivel in the industrialized nations…. The goal [of the campaign] is to reverse the rapid rise of smoking in such countries as China, India and Russia and to head off the epidemic in Africa before it can become entrenched.

Many countries have become addicted to the revenues generated by tobacco taxes or government-owned tobacco companies. They will have to be persuaded that the long-term health damage caused by tobacco far exceeds any short-term gain from tobacco revenues.

Bloomberg and Gates have already committed $375 to begin burning-out the competition – and plan on getting to the neediest countries before Big Tobacco does.

-Betsy Avila

Fueling the Malaria Debate

Yesterday’s New York Times prominently featured an article describing the debate in the public health community about what are appropriate goals for the fight against malaria. Goals for fighting malaria vary between improving access to control and prevention measures and full eradication of the disease. Full eradication of the disease would mean that no person has the disease, but also that it exists nowhere, except as the New York Times notes, in a laboratory. This was last accomplished with smallpox when the last naturally occurring case of smallpox was recorded in 1977 in Somalia. Smallpox was certified eradicated in 1980.

The most recent round of discussions were sparked late last year when Bill and Melinda Gates called for a push towards eradication at a conference they held in Seattle. Despite the excitement created for such an initiative, the announcement enlivened debate among the scientific community about whether eradication is a realistic goal to set for the community and the potential disappointment of setting the goal and not reaching it. Smallpox had a unique set of credentials that made it a candidate for eradication, including that it could only be carried by humans rather than be primarily carried by mosquitoes in the case of malaria.

The past several years have seen a rapid increase in funding for fighting malaria. Spending from the United States, the Global Fund and World Bank on malaria from 2001 to 2003 was only $348 million. From 2004 to 2006, this number rose to just over $1 billion. The current version of the PEPFAR bill just recently agreed to in the House called for $5 billion in spending on malaria over the next 5 years from the United States alone. This would fund the United States’ proportionate share of the global estimates to achieve universal access to control and prevention for those living in endemic countries. Senators Clinton, McCain, and Obama have all committed to significantly ramp up the United States’ spending on malaria if elected president.

Though the debate about eradication versus control is one that is largely restricted to academic settings and concerns about setting realistic expectations, it is one that is likely to increasingly play out in the public discourse as the United States moves to spend more on fighting this disease.

-Josh Lozman

This Just In

Videos from the Gates Foundation’s Malaria Forum below.

See Bill Gates’ first post on the ONE Blog here.

An Audacious Goal

This week in Seattle, an extraordinary group of people – scientists, policymakers, and advocates – came together for three days to discuss what can be done to stop malaria. Melinda and I issued a challenge to those attending the meeting. We asked them to begin charting a course to eradicate malaria – not just to control or reduce it, but to work toward a time when no one on earth is infected with malaria, and no mosquitoes carry the disease.

Today, malaria kills more than one million people every year, most of them children in Africa. That’s the equivalent of losing every student in the New York City public school system in one year.

We know that eradicating malaria is an audacious goal. But advances in science and medicine, new political commitments, and the dedication of people like you have given the world an historic opportunity to conquer malaria. It won’t be easy and it won’t happen quickly, but I’m optimistic that we can make this disease history.

At the forum in Seattle, Melinda and I called on the U.S. presidential candidates to commit to expand the President’s Malaria Initiative, a great program started by President Bush. I hope you will join us in asking all of the candidates to make this pledge and keep the fight against malaria on the national agenda.

I am confident that together, we can produce the energy, compassion, and commitment needed to win the fight against malaria.

-Bill Gates

*** To view a webcast of the Seattle malaria forum, visit www.kaisernetwork.org/healthcast/malariaforum2007. For more information about how you can help fight malaria, visit ONE.org.