In one of the largest philanthropic donations in history, The Gates Foundation is donating this enormous sum to assist in the battle for preventable childhood diseases in the developing world. The contribution goes to the International Vaccine Fund and will help fight diseases such as diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, polio and yellow fever in 72 different countries. In 1999, the Gates Foundation gave an identical $750 million that established the Fund itself. The World Health Organization credits the first donation in 1999 with saving the lives of over 670,000 children already. The Gates Foundation is the world’s largest charitable organization with an endowment of 27 billion dollars.

This entry was posted by Michelle Sterling on Tuesday, January 25th, 2005 at 8:30 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.