Gates Announces Record-Breaking Pledge to Spend $10-Billion on Immunizations

Calling for a new “decade of vaccines,” Bill and Melinda Gates last month announced that their foundation will spend $10-billion over the next 10 years to finance vaccines for impoverished people—the largest pledge ever by a grant maker to a specific cause.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, the couple said they hope the commitment would spur support by governments, corporations, and other donors to take new steps such as the creation of new vaccines to curb severe diarrhea and pneumonia. Potentially, such a health push could save the lives of some 8.7 million children in Africa and other developing regions by 2019, the Gateses said.

“We’ve made vaccines our No. 1 priority at the Gates foundation because we’ve seen firsthand their incredible impact on children’s lives,” said Ms. Gates.

Twice as Much

To be sure, vaccine programs are not a new cause for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support. Historically they have been its top priority, and in the previous 10 years, the Gates fund gave $4.5-billion to vaccination work. The Davos announcement essentially doubles the bet on the success of such health efforts.

At Davos, Mr. Gates said the new money would support a variety of projects, including basic research and finding new ways to get life-saving vaccines to people in remote parts of the world.

The software mogul emphasized that scientific innovations are needed to achieve the drop in child-mortality rates he and his wife hope for.

“Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries,” he said. “Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before.”

Mr. Gates sounded a similar theme a few days before the $10-billion pledge was announced, calling on philanthropy to back breakthrough innovations in science and education in his annual letter.

Since the Gates fFoundation was created in 1999, a large portion of its vaccine grants have gone to the GAVI Alliance, which is also supported by the World Bank, governments, the United Nations, and others.

The alliance says it has vaccinated some 257 million children worldwide, preventing 5 million deaths.

While Gates-supported vaccination work has earned praise from global-health officials, some have suggested it has not reached as many children as reported.

In a 2008 study, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which also receives money from Gates, said that those programs have likely overestimated their success, in part because some countries receive a financial payment for each child they vaccinate and have an incentive to exaggerate their accomplishments.

Despite this, the study did say the programs have led to a steady increase in child-vaccination rates for diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough, protecting about 74 percent of the children in developing countries against these life-threatening health problems.