Albert Sabin Vaccine Institute Receives Second Grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

NEW CANAAN, Conn. -- The Albert B. Sabin Vaccine Institute announced today it received a five-year, $500,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant will help fund the Sabin Vaccine Colloquium, an annual meeting of government, industry, academia, non-government organization and philanthropic leaders to generate ideas to speed the development of new vaccines and immunization in developing countries.

"The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is drawing worldwide attention to the devastating human, economic and social toll that infectious diseases exact on developing nations," said Institute Chairman H. R. Shepherd. "This grant enables the Sabin Vaccine Institute to continue a productive leadership program that fosters solutions to the extraordinary challenges of disease prevention in developing countries."

Some of the ideas discussed at the 1999 Sabin Vaccine Colloquium were incorporated into the Millennium Vaccine Initiative proposed by President Clinton in January 2000.

"The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is proud to support the Sabin Vaccine Colloquium, a collaborative effort aimed at increasing access to life-saving vaccines," said Gordon Perkin, Director, Global Health Programs for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In March, the Foundation awarded an $18 million, five-year grant to the Sabin Vaccine Institute to fund development of a hookworm vaccine. About 23 percent of the world's population suffer from hookworm infection, which causes malnutrition and anemia, and stunts the physical and intellectual development of children.

The Sabin Vaccine Institute is a nonprofit educational and research institute. Its mission is to save lives by stimulating development of new vaccines and by increasing immunization rates. It was founded in 1993, and named for Albert B. Sabin, developer of the oral polio vaccine that has been at the heart of worldwide efforts to eradicate paralytic polio. The Institute's headquarters is in New Canaan, Connecticut and it has an office in the Washington, DC area. Additional information about the Institute is available at their website.