Vaccines are a major weapon in the fight against disease. Today the Bill & Melinda Gates have pledged funds for a “decade of vaccines” in poor and developing countries.
Their press release goes on to say
The Gateses said that increased investment in vaccines by governments and the private sector could help developing countries dramatically reduce child mortality by the end of the decade, and they called for others to help fill critical financing gaps in both research funding and childhood immunization programs.
“We must make this the decade of vaccines,” said Bill Gates. “Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before.”
A video of the full press conference is available to the right of the press release page.
The broader announcement called for a wide range of initiatives including scaling vaccine programs up, laboratory research and clinical trials to create new vaccines, introducing new vaccines for pneumonia and severe diarrhoea among other things, and improving the market and access of vaccines in developing countries.
The initiative is “in addition to the $4.5 billion that the Gates Foundation has already committed to vaccine research, development and delivery to date across its entire disease portfolio since its inception.”
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To give a little light relief from the weightiness of the topic, let’s illustrate the illogic of using popularity in lieu of demonstration of effectiveness by pardoxially considering the morbid example of mausoleums.
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