Gates foundation gives grants for research

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced 76 grants of US$100,000 each to pursue ideas for transforming health in developing countries.

The announcement, made in Arusha, Tanzania, aims at empowering young and upcoming researchers pursue innovative ideas that would lead to effective and affordable medicines for the world’s poorest people who have difficulty accessing treatment.

The grants, under a programme known as Grand Challenges Exploration, support researchers across 16 countries, including nine in Europe and Africa with ideas as diverse as using the power of sunlight to kill malaria-causing mosquito larvae and developing a device that repels mosquitoes without insecticides.

 “Some of the biggest stumbling blocks in global health are now being overcome with promising new vaccines and treatments,” said Tachi Yamada, president of the Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program. 

“Grand Challenges Explorations will continue to fill the pipeline with possibilities and hopefully produce a breakthrough idea that could save untold numbers of lives.” 

This year’s winners included Elijah Songok from the Kenya Medical Research Institute.  His research is within the category “Create new ways to prevent or cure HIV infection” and he hopes to better understand preliminary findings from studies of sex workers that natural resistance to HIV may be linked to genetic markers for type 2 diabetes.

Mr Fredros Okumu of Ifakara Health Institute, a Kenyan based in Tanzania, is another winner.  His research is within the “Create new tools to accelerate the eradication of malaria” category.

As malaria-transmitting mosquitoes spend a greater part of their lives outside human dwellings than inside, Mr Okumu is looking to fabricate outdoor decoy sites to attract and trap breeding, resting and feeding mosquitoes.

They will then develop a location model to guide optimal placement of the devices, and conduct a village trial to test the efficacy of the decoys in reducing malaria transmission.

Jackie Obey from the University of Eastern Africa in Kenya, through the grant, will test the effectiveness of a test tube kit to indicate the presence of a protein released by the malaria parasite.

Another grantee, Peter Lubega Yiga of AdhocWorks Foundation in South Africa will test the efficacy of a fermentation-based household mosquito repellent whereas Margaret Njoroge of Med Biotech Laboratories in Uganda will develop an intranasal vaccine for mothers, designed to induce antibodies against malaria in breast milk and confer immunity on their babies.

The announcements at the Arusha International Conference Centre marks the third round of the foundation’s Grand Challenges Explorations initiative to expand the pipeline of ideas for improving global health.

To date, 262 researchers representing 30 countries have been awarded Grand Challenges Explorations grants.

Recognizing that great ideas can come from anywhere and anyone, in 2008 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched Grand Challenges Explorations, a $100 million programme to encourage even bolder and less conventional solutions.

Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of $1 million or more, and could eventually evolve into Grand Challenges project.