Bill Gates to donate $12 million to fund research for universal flu vaccine

LONDON (AFP): Billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates announced on Friday his charity — the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — is offering $12 million for a “transformational” flu vaccine after warning that the world is not ready to deal with a modern-day pandemic.

Gates warned of a threat, global flu outbreak poses, killing millions of people worldwide and crippling health services in both developed and developing countries.

Speaking at the annual meeting for the Massachusetts Society of Medicine in Boston Gates said, “to broaden efforts even further, today we are launching a $12 million Grand Challenge in partnership with the Page family to accelerate the development of a universal flu vaccine,”

“The goal is to encourage bold thinking by the world’s best scientists across disciplines, including those new to the field,” he added.

Gates presented a simulation by the Institute for Disease Modeling which showed the new flu, like the one that killed 50 million people in the 1918 pandemic would now most likely kill 30 million people within six months.

If you were to tell the world’s governments that weapons that could kill 30 million people were under construction right now, there’d be a sense of urgency about preparing for the threat, Gates said.

“In the case of biological threats, that sense of urgency is lacking,” he said.

“The world needs to prepare for pandemics in the same serious way it prepares for war.”

Gates also added that the scientists involved are looking for something totally transformational that would replace the need for an annual vaccine.

He also added the vaccine would not only protect against pandemic flu but would also protect against every other type of virus.