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The Grand Challenges in Global Health Program of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
On 26 January 2003, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Bill Gates announced a $200-million medical research initiative - The Grand Challenges in Global Health - based on a century-old model, the grand challenges formulated by the mathematician David Hilbert.
Hilbert’s list of important unsolved problems in mathematics has spurred major research innovations in the field. The Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative was proposed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) on the assumption that, with greater encouragement and funding, contemporary science and technology could remove some of the obstacles to more rapid progress against diseases that disproportionately affect the developing world.
In partnership with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, and the Wellcome Trust, the initiative totalling $436 Million aims to harness the power of science and technology to dramatically improve health in the world’s poorest countries. The intent is to engage creative minds from across the world and the breadth of scientific and technology communities including those who were not traditionally engaged in global health research, to partner in developing solutions to the stated challenges.
The Grand Challenges
A grand challenge is a call for a specific scientific or technological innovation that would remove a critical barrier to solving an important health problem in the developing world with a high likelihood of global impact and feasibility. A grand challenge is neither the statement of the global health problem itself (e.g., malaria or AIDS) nor the request for a specific health intervention (e.g., a drug or vaccine), but the call for a discrete scientific or technological innovation which will break through the roadblock that stands between where we are now and where we would like to be in science, medicine, and public health.
The Grand Challenges, identified through a call for submissions from scientists and public health leaders around the world, are goal oriented under 7 goals encompassing 14 thematic global health topics under which applications were reviewed. Following the launch of the program in 2003, over 1500 applications (Letter of Intent) were received, out of which 454 were invited to submit a full proposal. In 2005, 43 projects were finally selected for funding through a peer review process. These projects have progressed over the last 4 years, managed by teams working in partnerships across disciplines, sectors and countries.
Our GCGH project falls under GOAL 2: To create new vaccines.
The theme of Grand Challenge #6 is: Learn which immunological responses provide protective immunity.