How were world governments, under constant pressure to cut back on foreign aid due to the economic downturn, convinced to support the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization to the tune of $4.3 billion?
Bill Gates and his foundation likely had some influence, sure. He’s long been a big proponent of vaccines. But even the Microsoft billionaire can’t always get governments to do what he wants. That’s where his friend Bono and the ONE Campaign come in.
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?
Dorothy Parvaz, a reporter for Al Jazeera and a former colleague of mine at the Seattle Post Intelligencer, has been released by Iranian authorities after she was detained in Syria and deported to Iran. Parvaz returned to Doha, Qatar, where she is now based.
This is a guest Humanosphere post from Kunle Oguneye, president of the Seattle chapter of The African Network, a Nigerian and former tech worker who now writes children’s books (which should, I hope, explain the photo).
Oguneye wrote me to suggest that Humanosphere tends to suffer from the same bias, or lack of diversity and perspective, that afflicts much of the local global health and development community.
Kentaro Toyama is clearly a heretic. A geek heretic.
And, based on his career path, I would guess brilliant.
A computer scientist currently at the University of California, Berkeley, Toyama co-founded Microsoft Research India in 2005 and remained there as assistant managing director until 2009.
If you’re not familiar with what they do at Microsoft Research, think artificial intelligence, computer vision, terabyte juggling, high-octane mathematics and the craziest things you can try to do with bits, bytes or any kind of information technology.
Maybe you've heard about it already, but former Seattle PI reporter and columnist Dorothy Parvaz has gone missing in Syria.
Journalists take risks to make sure people’s stories are told, to shine a light on wrongdoing based on the belief that public awareness is the first step toward positive change. Today happens to be World Press Freedom Day, this year hosted by the U.S.
We hope you figured out long ago that the title of KPLU's "Can Seattle Save the World? (Poverty, Health and Chocolate)" event was tongue-firmly-in-cheek, but also meant to raise some important questions. There's a serious debate about the meaning and priority of "health" in "global health."
The event itself, last Tuesday, proved so popular that we moved it to a room three times larger than originally planned -- and nearly packed the room. Not to toot our horn too much, but immediate feedback was enthusiastic. "Do it again," was the most common response.
We'd love to. In the meantime, we are belatedly offering a replay -- video from the event.
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