Bill Gates Donates $168 Million to Fight Malaria
Date: 23-Sep-03
Country: MOZAMBIQUE
Author: Wambui Chege
"It's time to treat Africa's malaria epidemic like the crisis it is," said Microsoft chairman Bill Gates during a visit to the southern African country of Mozambique.
"Malaria is robbing Africa of its people and its potential - beyond the extraordinary human toll, malaria is one of the greatest barriers to Africa's economic growth, draining national budgets and deepening poverty," he told reporters.
Malaria is the biggest killer in Africa alongside HIV/AIDS, killing about 3,000 children a day and costing the world's poorest continent around $12 billion a year in lost income.
The grants from Gates and his foundation exceed the $100 million allocated globally for research into the killer disease and will be used to fund research on new malaria prevention strategies for children, new vaccines and new drugs.
Mozambique - one of the world's poorest countries - is also one of the nations worst hit by malaria, a parasitic disease transmitted by the female anopheles mosquito which destroys red blood cells and impairs blood flow to vital organs.
Medical experts say malaria - which also accounts for about 40 percent of public health spending in Africa - is making a comeback on the continent for the first time in 20 years, because of an increase in strains resistant to drugs.
But Mozambique's Manhica research center, funded by Gates, may be close to finding a new method for treating infants known as the "intermittent preventive treatment."
This involves administering the anti-malaria drug sulfadoxine pirimetanine three times during a child's first year of life. Early studies showed this treatment could reduce malaria among infants by nearly 60 percent, and halve the incidence of severe anemia resulting from the disease.
Former college dropout Gates - worth an estimated $41 billion - is in Africa together to visit projects funded by his philanthropic foundation, which has an endowment of $24 billion.
