UCSF wins $5 million from Gates Foundation to fight malaria and improve health systems

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will give $5 million to the University of California, San Francisco, to promote and implement promising strategies against global health crises, according to a report in San Francisco Business Times. UCSF Global Health Sciences will use the funds to start an “action tank,” led by Sir Richard Feachem, the former executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. The Global Health Group will first focus on malaria eradication and an enhanced role for the private sector in strengthening health systems in developing countries. “The group’s first project will be an incredibly important one — helping to accelerate progress toward the eradication of malaria, a disease that kills thousands of children in Africa every day,” said Tachi Yamada, M.D., president of the Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program.