The grand challenges of the Gates Foundation: what impact on global child health?

Abstract

Millions of children in poor countries die each year from preventable diseases.1 This is not news. Since their inception, international organizations including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN), have dedicated countless hours and millions of dollars to alleviating this problem. More recently, a number of private foundations have become active in the work of childhood survival. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the leading financial supporters of global health, recently announced over US$ 450 million to be distributed in grants to 43 projects that address the Foundation's 14 Grand Challenges (Box 1).2 The programme aims to stimulate the creation of novel ways to prevent, treat and cure the diseases that kill millions of people each year in developing countries. In this paper we will explore the potential impact of some of goals of the Grand Challenges for global child health within the context of current international health initiatives including the Integrated Management of Child Diseases created by the WHO and UNICEF, the UN's Millennium Development Goals, and the Bellagio Study Group's assessment of the current state of global child survival in the developing world.