Tagged: Gates Foundation

“We live in this amazing community where so many people are trying to make a difference …”

Seattle has become a hub, or more accurately a hodgepodge, of international do-gooders. And, well, nobody seems to really have a handle on everything going on.

That’s where another internationally oriented foundation in Seattle comes in. Appropriately enough, it’s called the Seattle International Foundation.

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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded its latest set of grants supporting innovative scientific research aimed at solving problems in global health.

The grants, awarded through the Gates Foundation’s $100 million Grand Challenges Exploration program, for this go-round appear to favor novel methods aimed at combating malaria.

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In an interview with the UK's Daily Mail, Bill Gates talked family, friends and global health. The world’s second-richest man was striking in his normalcy, sharing how he is teased by his kids, works too much and isn’t worried about a personal legacy.

"Legacy," he told the Dail Mail, "is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy. If people look and see that childhood deaths dropped from nine million a year to four million because of our investment, then wow!”

Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization – Major public and private donors achieved a milestone in global health today by committing funding to immunize more than 250 million of the world’s poorest children against life-threatening diseases by 2015 and prevent more than four million premature deaths.

Vaccines are “miracles,” Bill Gates likes to say, because of their power to prevent death and disease so simply and at such a low cost.

Today, governments and international donors (the Gates Foundation chief among them) agreed to boost funding for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization initiative by $4.3 billion.

In this time of economic recession, GAVI’s success at fund-raising is extraordinary. However, the question must be asked: Does GAVI strike the hardest bargain with drug companies, getting the needed vaccines at the lowest cost?

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Dr. Tachi Yamada is leaving his position in June as head of the Gates Foundation’s global health program.

That’s big news primarily because the Gates’ global health program is so big, the largest program at the world’s largest philanthropy, accounting for more than half of the $3 billion the Gates Foundation spends every year trying to make the world a better, healthier and more equitable place.

KPLU's Humanosphere blogger Tom Paulson has a great post today about why the Gates Foundation's director of HIV and tuberculosis programs feels this year's World AIDS day is different than it's dozens of predecessors. 

A surprise windstorm; world finance experts in Seattle, and grocery workers talk strike.