Bill Gates doubles grant for health research

GENEVA - Microsoft founder Bill Gates more than doubled his financing for key health research to US$450 million ($639 million) this week after telling assembled health ministers the world had a "historic chance" to tame killer diseases.

In a speech to the opening session of the World Health Organisation's annual assembly, the world's richest man said a combination of "astonishing" scientific advances and rising global awareness of the suffering caused by disease gave real hope.

"We are on the verge of taking historic steps to reduce disease in the developing world ... [if] we match these accelerating capacities of science with the emerging moral awareness of global health inequities," he said.

The Gates Foundation is the world's wealthiest philanthropic organisation, with assets worth US$28 billion. The pledge increases its funding commitment to unearthing solutions for 14 major health "challenges" to US$450 million from an initial US$200 million at the project's launch in late 2003.

Among the challenges shortlisted by thousands of scientists worldwide in a poll is creating a single-dose oral vaccine that supplies all the basic childhood immunisations in one go. The foundation will announce its first grants this summer.

"I'm convinced that we will see more ground-breaking advances for health in the next 10 years than we have seen in the last 50."

Examples include a drug for visceral leishmaniasis, known as Black Fever or Dum-Dum fever, which is transmitted by certain sand flies and kills more than 250,000 people each year.

Malaria vaccine trials had also brought hope that children could soon be immunised against the disease, which now kills about one million people a year, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa.

But Governments in developed and developing countries still need to do more, Gates said.

Rich nations must deliver on promises to increase financing to fight Third World disease.

And poorer countries must increase their own spending because Governments in sub-Saharan Africa spend a smaller share of economic output on health than any other region.

More resources had to be dedicated to battling diseases that affect poorer countries, Gates said, adding that when remedies were found, money also had to be spent to get them to those affected.

Failings continue to lead to more than one million child deaths each year from vaccine-preventable diseases, Gates said.

- REUTERS