PATH’s meningitis vaccine project was featured on ABC’s Good Morning America show on Memorial Day:
Here’s my post from early December, when PATH, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and other partners started immunizing in Burkina Faso, the culmination of a decade-long struggle to develop an inexpensive meningitis vaccine designed for use only against an epidemic strain in Africa.
Here’s While the immunization campaign is impressive, having already protected some 20 million people, the real game-changer here was the demonstration by PATH (with funding from the Gates Foundation) that it was feasible to develop a new vaccine of benefit only to poor communities at a cost — about 50 cents — they could afford. I wrote a bit more about this project recently in a story on PATH’s 34th anniversary.
The GooMoAmerica story, as part of ABC’s Be The Change: Save A Life series, was also funded by the Gates Foundation. ABC, to its credit, mentioned this in its report.
Some are disturbed about the extent to which the Seattle philanthropy, which of course is a big player itself in global health, is funding media coverage of global health. The Gates Foundation says it takes a hands-off approach and is just trying to encourage more coverage of neglected issues.
