Bill Gates praises research at the University of Warwick

At the Geneva summit on Neglected Tropical Diseases yesterday, Bill Gates described research done at the University of Warwick as “playing a major role in protecting the world’s poorest people from Neglected Tropical Diseases and enabling them to live healthier, more prosperous lives.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided Warwick with a grant of over £5 million in February 2015 to support its research. They are working alongside other research institutions, pharmaceutical companies, governments and charitable foundations to try and eradicate the diseases.

The research completed at the University of Warwick provides data on the prevalence of Neglected Tropical Diseases. Its aim is to help combat NTD’s and to track progress on the WHO’s goal of controlling and eliminating 10 NTDs by 2020.  There are around 1.5 billion people infected worldwide, of which 1 billion are receiving treatment. The numbers of victims of the guinea worm disease, one of the eighteen NTDs, fell from 3 million thirty years ago to just 25 last year.

The Associate Professor of Epidemiology at Warwick, Deirdre Hollingsworth, has said she is “delighted to be part of the international effort to rid the world of these terrible diseases.”