You’ve gotta love the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation for simply outstanding efforts on behalf of the hundreds of millions who suffer from preventable diseases, lack of water, and lack of education. I also want to give the President some kudos for this coming public recognition of malaria and global health as extremely pressing problems of modern times. History will judge us harshly if we fail to tackle these problems NOW as awareness, funding, and political priorities are bringing the solutions within our reach.
The following press release just came in:
December 11, 2006
Major Commitment to Global Fight Against Malaria
New grants to expand malaria control, research, and advocacy efforts
At White House summit, Melinda Gates to call for stronger global malaria response, more funding
Contact:
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Phone: 206.709.3400
Email: media@gatesfoundation.org
SEATTLE — On the eve of a major White House summit on malaria, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation committed $83.5 million in new grants to combat the disease, which claims more than one million lives every year. The grants will expand access to bednets, treatment, and other malaria control tools; speed research on vaccines and other new prevention methods; and boost global advocacy to fight the disease. Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation, will speak at the White House summit on December 14.
“Every day, thousands of mothers watch helplessly as their children die from a disease that we have known how to prevent for decades,” Mrs. Gates said. “The continuing toll of malaria is a moral outrage-we would not allow it here in the U.S., and we should not allow it anywhere.”
“The world is finally waking up to the malaria catastrophe,” Mrs. Gates continued. “It’s time to close the gap in funding, accelerate research, and work together in a more strategic way to strengthen the global malaria fight.”
The upcoming White House malaria summit, hosted by President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush, will convene 250 political leaders, scientists, and advocates to discuss new opportunities to combat malaria globally and kick off new public-private efforts to address the disease.
Interesting: is this be a realistic death toll from DDT ban?
Joe Duck 
It is nice to see Bill Gates continually giving something back. Back when I was active in Rotary we always encouraged successful business people to give back to their communities and if they could on a global scale.
It is amazing what resources he can bring to bear. I just hope his foundation is run well from a financial standpoint there always seems to be some much corruption from within charity organizations.
I understand a difference with this foundation is that they tend to look for entrepreneurial projects that can scale up easily to meet big problems. More a “grow success” than the old US AID projects where you would often have lots of resources inefficiently applied in grand ways (big dams, etc).
I have not researched this much but I think the Gates’ record is already very impressive in terms of ROI on lives saved.
My wife (who is an educational non-profit finance specialist) says the Gates foundation is pretty well run.
They seem to do “evidence-based philanthropy,” by analogy to evidence-based medicine.
Personally, I think Melinda Gates is due a lot more credit for this foundation than she usually receives.
Thanks for the feedback it is helpful to better understand. It will be nice to see how some of their long-term initiatives pan out.
The White House involvement in this initiative seems to be coming from Mrs. Bush: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/12/13/laura_bush_to_open_white_house_summit_on_malaria/
I always did like Laura Bush the best!
Who really now is engaged in the control of health? To mine it neglected the large pharmaceutical companies and the medical centers. There should be a centralized management WBR LeoP
Creating a Mums for Malaria Movement – chrysanthemums provide the herbicide used to treat bednets – let us help malaria-producing communities grow chrysanthemums and partner with pyrethrum producing companies for distribution, training and ecommerce at local levels – use locally produced herbicide to treat locally made bednets and other clothing and make some money while protecting the environment and helping eradicate the scourge of malaria
http://www.oprah.com/community/blogs/magmagmag/2009/04/27/mums-for-malaria-movement
http://muriella.wordpress.com