REDMOND, Wash., July 13 (UPI) -- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has distributed $6 billion since its founding four years ago, has pledged half of that to the developing world.
The foundation's influence can be seen in rising vaccination rates in some of the world's poorest countries, in clinical trials of drugs and in new devices that make the delivery of health care easier and cheaper.
Dr. Tore Godal, executive secretary of Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, a major Gates beneficiary, said it had delivered more than 180 million doses of vaccines since 2000, thus saving more than 100,000 lives.
Gates figures that his philanthropy will have touched more than a million lives by the end of the decade.
"Bill Gates is going to be remembered more for what he did for international public health than what he did for the world of computers," Richard T. Mahoney, of Arizona State University, told The New York Times.
