MICROSOFT billionaire Bill Gates has pledged a further $30m (£15m) grant to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine for pioneering malaria research.
The grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will fund research at the centre on Pembroke Place and at 38 partner institutions in 27 countries,
Confirming the School of Tropical Medicine’s place as a centre for medical development around the world, the research will help improve the control and treatment of malaria in pregnancy in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The five year programme, coordinated from the Liverpool school, will directly benefit 50m women who face exposure to malaria whilst pregnant every year, potentially saving 100,000 lives annually in Africa alone.
It is hoped the consortium’s research will bring eradication of the disease one step closer.
This is not the first grant given by the Gates foundation to the school and follows $50.7m worth of funding in 2005 and a $23m award to support research of parasitic disease human filariasis, announced last March.
Malaria in pregnancy is a major cause of severe maternal anaemia and preventable low birth weight in infants, which increases risk of death and little research has been carried out on the subject.
Consortium leader Dr Feiko ter Kuile said: “It is really fantastic news, for us in Liverpool but particularly for the pregnant women. This research just was not possible five or 10 years ago because there was no funding.
“This grant provides research-ers from all over the world with the opportunity to conduct a much expanded and needed research programme focussed on this high risk group.”
Dr ter Kuile says Liverpool has a tradition of both Malaria and pregnancy research and believes this is partly why it is the coord-inating body for this project.
“The consortium approach generates a new momentum of life-saving research, which will provide evidence-based policy changes in the shortest possible time and enable worldwide exper-tise to be combined.”
The news comes just months after the school’s new £23m Centre for Tropical and Infectious Diseases opened.
Dr Regina Rabinovich, director of Infectious Diseases Develop-ment at the Gates Foundation added: “Defeating malaria will require new and better tools to prevent and treat the disease in pregnancy. By undertaking this important research, Liverpool and its partners will help bring the world closer to malaria eradication.
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