Benioff and Gates Commit $100-Million to Combat Preterm Birth
April 30, 2014 | Read Time: 1 minute
Bay Area philanthropists Marc and Lynne Benioff and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will donate a combined $100-million over 10 years to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital to finance research into premature births, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
The University of California at San Francisco will invest $50-million each from the couple and the foundation in studying the biological causes of preterm births and improving access to treatments that could prevent them. Premature birth is the leading cause of death in newborns worldwide, and those who survive early deliveries are far more prone to serious illness than full-term infants.
The Benioffs donated $100-million to the children’s hospital complex earlier in April, their second nine-figure gift to the facility in four years.
