Global Health Overview

Applying science and technology to improve public health is one of the past century's greatest accomplishments. The pace of innovation in health promises to accelerate as developments like the decoding of the human genome revolutionize our ability to prevent and treat disease.

But lifesaving advances are failing to benefit those who need them most—people in the poorest countries. Two thirds of deaths in young children are entirely preventable with tools that exist today—such as vaccines to prevent measles, diphtheria, and tetanus.

Some of the most serious diseases affecting the developing world, such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria, lack effective, affordable solutions. This is largely because just a small fraction of the billions spent on medical research every year is used to discover new vaccines and medicines for these and other diseases common in poor countries.

The foundation's Global Health program is based on the belief that all lives, no matter where they are lived, have equal value. We target our grants to programs that have the potential to provide the greatest benefit for the most people. We focus our grantmaking on two priority areas: research to develop new health solutions and programs to expand the reach of existing health tools.

In 2004, we saw significant progress in a number of areas, including the critical challenges of developing vaccines to prevent malaria and TB.

To learn more about a few of our grantees, click through the milestones at the top of this page. And to see a complete list of all the foundation's grants, go to our Grants Highlights page.