2007 Annual Report - Foundation for the National Institutes of Health

GCGH:
Grand Challenges
in Global Health
The Grand Challenges in Global Health (GCGH) initiative was established in 2003
to address and overcome scientific obstacles to solving the major health challenges
of the developing world and to create “deliverable technologies”—health tools—that
are not only effective, but also inexpensive to produce, easy to distribute, and simple
to use in developing countries.
A partnership between the Foundation for NIH, the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, The Wellcome Trust, and the Canadian Institutes of Health
Research, this $436.6 million initiative funds over 40 projects that variously
seek to tackle one of 14 major scientific challenges that, if solved, could lead
to important advances in preventing, treating, and curing diseases of the
developing world.
Each year, over 300 scientists meet to review progress, share ideas and forge new
partnerships to ultimately reduce the technical barriers to improved health in the
developing world.
Five years into its work, the initiative is seeing promising progress in understanding
the basis for severe malaria in children, the development of new insect-control
measures, the development of new approaches to drug development, the treatment
of chronic infectious diseases, the improvement of the nutritional value of crops
and more.
GCGH CapeTown
The 2007 GCGH annual meeting was held
in Capetown, South Africa in conjunction
with the Keystone Symposium. The Most
Reverend Bishop Desmond Tutu, Ann
Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF,
and Graça Machel, wife of Nelson Mandela
and a passionate advocate for human
rights, spoke on the challenges of global
health and improving the lives of people in
the developing world.
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