Global health division

Since 2011, the president of the Global Health Program is Trevor Mundel.

• The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria: The foundation has donated more than $6.6 billion for global health programs, including over $1.3 billion donated as of 2012 on malaria alone, greatly increasing the dollars spent per year on malaria research. Before the Gates efforts on malaria, malaria drugmakers had largely given up on producing drugs to fight the disease, and the foundation is the world's largest donor to research on diseases of the poor. With the help of Gates-funded vaccination drives, deaths from measles in Africa have dropped by 90 percent since 2000.

The foundation has donated billions of dollars to help sufferers of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, protecting millions of children from death at the hands of preventable diseases.

The Global Health Program's other significant grants include:

• Polio eradication: In 2006, the foundation provided $86 million toward efforts attempting to eradicate poliomyelitis (polio).
• The GAVI Alliance: The foundation gave the GAVI Alliance (formerly the "Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization") a donation of $750 million on January 25, 2005.
• Children's Vaccine Program: The Children's Vaccine Program, run by the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), received a donation of $27 million to help vaccinate against Japanese encephalitis on December 9, 2003.
• University of Washington Department of Global Health: The foundation provided approximately $30 million for the foundation of the new Department of Global Health at the University of Washington in Seattle, US. The donation promoted three of the foundation's target areas: education, Pacific Northwest and global health.citation needed
• HIV Research: The foundation donated a total of $287 million to various HIV/AIDS researchers. The money was split between 16 different research teams across the world, on the condition that the findings are shared amongst the teams.
• Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation: The foundation gave the Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation more than $280 million to develop and license an improved vaccine against tuberculosis (TB) for use in high-burden countries (HBCs).
• Cheaper high-tech tuberculosis (TB) test: In August 2012, the foundation, in partnership with PEPFAR (United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and UNITAID (an international drug purchasing facility hosted by WHO), announced they had finalized an agreement to reduce the cost of a commercial TB test (Cepheid's Xpert MTB/RIF run on the GeneXpert platform), from $16.86 to $9.98. This test can take the place of smear microscopy, a technique first developed in the 1880s by Robert Koch. Smear microscopy often does not show TB infection in persons who are also co-infected with HIV, whereas the GeneXpert system can show TB in the co-infected patient. In addition, the system can show whether the particular TB strain is resistant to the bactericidal antibiotic rifampicin, a widely accepted indicator of the presence of multidrug resistant tuberculosis.
• Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) research: The foundation awarded the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Kuvin Center for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases a $5 million grant in 2009 for research into visceral leishmaniasis (VL), an emerging parasitic disease in Ethiopia, Africa, where it is frequently associated with HIV/AIDS, and is a leading cause of adult illness and death. The project, a collaborative effort with Addis Ababa University, will gather data for analysis—to identify the weak links in the transmission cycle—and devise methods for control of the disease. In 2005 the foundation provided a $30 million grant to The Institute for OneWorld Health to support the nonprofit pharmaceutical company's VL work in the rural communities of India, Bangladesh and Nepal. By September 2006, the company had received approval from the Indian body Drug-Controller General of India (DCGI) for the Paromomycin Intramuscular (IM) Injection, a drug that provides an effective cure for VL following a 21-day course. In 2010 Raj Shankar Ghosh, the Regional Director for the South Asia Institute for OneWorld Health, explained that the foundation funded "the majority of our work" in the development of the drug.
• Next-Generation Condom: The foundation gave $100,000 to 11 applicants in November 2013 to develop an improved condom; that is, one that "significantly preserves or enhances pleasure, in order to improve uptake and regular use", according to the Gates Foundation's Grand Challenges in Global Health website. Further grants of up to $1 million will be given to projects that are successful.
• Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs): Alongside WHO, the governments of the United States, United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates, and the World Bank, the foundation endorsed the London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases, "to eradicate, eliminate and intensify control of 17 selected diseases by 2015 and 2020", at a meeting on January 30, 2012, held at the Royal College of Physicians in London, UK. Gates was the principal organizer responsible for bringing together the heads of 13 of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and the foundation's monetary commitment to the Declaration was $363 million over five years. On April 3, 2014, the two-year anniversary of the Declaration, Gates attended a meeting in Paris, France, at which participants reviewed the progress that had been made against 10 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). The foundation committed a further $50 million, together with $50 million from the Children's Investment Fund Foundation and $120 million from the World Bank.
• Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI): A global group tasked with more quickly developing vaccines against infectious disease threats worldwide was launched on January 8, 2017 by a coalition of governments and nonprofit groups including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, funded with an initial investment of $460 million from Germany, Japan, Norway, the Wellcome Trust and the Gates foundation, aims to develop vaccines against known infectious disease threats that could be deployed quickly to contain outbreaks before they become global health emergencies, the group said in a statement at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
• In 2020, together with the UK research charity Wellcome and Mastercard, the Gates Foundation established the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator to hasten the development and evaluation of new and repurposed drugs and biologics to treat patients for COVID-19. After the World Health Organization’s appeal for funding, the Gates Foundation pledged an extra US$150 million on top of the US$100 million already committed earlier.