Both the millennium development goals (MDGs) and the Grand Challenges in Global Health, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, were massive efforts intended to spur progress in improving the health of the worlds poor — why did you feel that a new initiative was necessary?
The Grand Challenges in Global Health programme targeted infectious diseases. It had a different kind of energy behind it and a different kind of process. It also had $450 million behind it. The focus was purely on the needs of the developing world and, in the developing world, almost exclusively on infectious diseases. There was nothing similar to highlight the grand challenges of addressing chronic non-communicable diseases like heart disease and some cancers. Around the globe, these are now killing more people than infectious diseases. This is the case in most of the developing, as well as the developed, world. Eighty per cent of all the people who die of chronic diseases die in the developing world. Eighty per cent of the people who die of chronic disease, such as cancer, are from the developing world Flickr/2 dogs Was it a flaw of the MDG initiative that it didn’t really tackle chronic diseases? I think it was, but there’s always a danger in being too inclusive in any enterprise.
Related Questions
- Both the millennium development goals (MDGs) and the Grand Challenges in Global Health, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, were massive efforts intended to spur progress in improving the health of the worlds poor — why did you feel that a new initiative was necessary?
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