The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Fund Disease Surveillance Network in Africa and Asia to Prevent Childhood Mortality and Help Prepare for the Next Epidemic

PR NEWSWIRE                                                                                                  May 7, 2015

(Scroll down for interview with Bill Gates)

At its Global Partners Forum, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will announce the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Network (CHAMPS), a network of disease surveillance sites in developing countries. These sites will help gather better data, faster, about how, where and why children are getting sick and dying. This data will help the global health community get the right interventions to the right children in the right place to save lives. The network will also be invaluable in providing capacity and training in the event of an epidemic, such as Ebola or SARS. The Gates Foundation plans an initial commitment of up to $75 million on the effort.

"The world needs better, more timely public health data not only to prepare for the next epidemic, but to save children's lives now," said Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "Over the past 15 years, deaths of children in developing countries have been dramatically reduced, but to continue that trend for the next 15 years, we need more definitive data about where and why children are dying. This will also better position us to respond to other diseases that may turn into an epidemic."

This network of disease surveillance sites in areas with high childhood mortality rates in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia will offer a long-term approach to information management, laboratory infrastructure and workforce capacity – vital resources in geographies lacking sufficient public health infrastructure. This network could be repurposed quickly in the event of an epidemic, as in Nigeria where the national polio program's Emergency Operations Center was mobilized to fight Ebola.

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http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-bill--melinda-gates-foundation-to-fund-disease-surveillance-network-in-africa-and-asia-to-prevent-childhood-mortality-and-help-prepare-for-the-next-epidemic-300078689.html

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POLITICO by Kim Dixon                                            May 7, 2015

Bill Gates keeps talking about Ebola.

The West’s short-term memory on the recent epidemic — which has killed more than 10,000 people, mostly in sub-saharan African but with a smattering in richer countries — worries the billionaire philanthropist.

“It is a huge concern… will we take advantage of that?” Gates asked in a POLITICO interview, as his foundation announced a $75 million investment for new high-tech surveillance sites in Africa and Asia to fight epidemics.

Gates is making the rounds — in a recent TED talk, a New York Times op-ed and in the New England Journal of Medicine — to prevent the crisis from falling off the radar.

Read complete story.
http://www.politico.eu/article/gates-dont-forget-ebola/