Gates Foundation Grants Draw Attention to, Encourage Further Investment in HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB Research, Editorial Says

The "sustained generosity" of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has "spurred greater attention and investment toward diseases of the developing world," including HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, a Seattle Times editorial says. The foundation's grant of $450 million for research into new global health vaccines, drugs and other resources is "exhilarating" for scientists and "potentially lifesaving" for people in resource-poor settings, according to the editorial (Seattle Times, 5/19). The Gates Foundation earlier this week granted $250 million to to Grand Challenges in Global Health, an initiative that already has received $200 million from the foundation to provoke competition among scientists, researchers and inventors who are searching for solutions to global health issues (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 5/17). The Gates Foundation is "challenging science and technology worldwide" in order to "spee[d] up the interaction between science and applying its results," the Times says. As a result, foundation co-founder Bill Gates predicts more public health advances in the next decade than have been seen in the past 50 years, the editorial says, concluding, "That's wonderful from a scientific perspective. It is especially so from the perspective of those living in poor countries" (Seattle Times, 5/19).