2009 $1M Gates Award Winner Announced
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it will give its annual one million dollar global health award to the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), the Seattle Times reports. The school is the first academic institution to win the annual Gates Award and was selected because of its efforts to improve global health (Heim, The Business of Giving/Seattle Times, 5/18).
LSHTM plans to use the award funds to train more people worldwide to work in public health, the Telegraph reports. "For more than a century, the London School has trained some of the world's most outstanding public health leaders," Tachi Yamada, president of the Gates Foundation's global health program, said. He added that the school's "commitment to leadership" and "cutting-edge research" has contributed significantly to health in developing countries.
Andrew Haines, director of LSHTM, said, "We are delighted and proud to be honoured for the work we do which includes researching diseases that particularly afflict disadvantaged people around the world such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS but also increasingly cancer, cardiovascular disease and mental disorders."
More than 100 organizations were nominated for the award this year (Wardrop, Telegraph, 5/19).
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