Tag: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

70% of 10-Year-Olds now in Learning Poverty, Unable to Read and Understand a Simple Text

Stuart Mitchell

As a result of the worst shock to education and learning in recorded history, learning poverty has increased by a third in low- and middle-income countries, with an estimated 70% of 10-year-olds unable to understand a simple written text, according to a new report published by the World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF, UK government Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), USAID, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This rate was 57% before the pandemic, but now the learning crisis has deepened. This generation of students now risks losing $21 trillion…

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Novartis and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Collaborate to Discover and Develop an Accessible in Vivo Gene Therapy for Sickle Cell Disease

Stuart Mitchell

Novartis has announced that it has entered into a grant agreement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As part of the agreement, the foundation will provide funding support for the discovery and development of a single-administration, in vivo gene therapy to cure sickle cell disease (SCD). The project brings together Novartis drug discovery and gene therapy expertise with the Gates Foundation’s charitable objectives to expand access to healthcare in low-resource settings in an effort to address this potentially life-threatening genetic disease. “Existing gene therapy approaches to sickle cell disease…

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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome and Mastercard Launch Initiative to Speed Development and Access to Therapies for COVID-19

Stuart Mitchell

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome and Mastercard have committed up to $125 million in seed funding to speed-up the response to the COVID-19 epidemic by identifying, assessing, developing, and scaling-up treatments. The partners are committed to equitable access, including making products available and affordable in low-resource settings. The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator will play a catalytic role by accelerating and evaluating new and repurposed drugs and biologics to treat patients with COVID-19 in the immediate term, and other viral pathogens in the longer-term. Currently there are no broad-spectrum antivirals…

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