11/8/06

Gates Foundation helping Diarrhea Research

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving a nonprofit pharmaceutical company $46 million to expand its research on new treatments for diarrheal disease, which directly kills more than 2 million children worldwide each year.

The announcement of the grant to the Institute for OneWorld Health, a San Francisco-based pharmaceutical company, was set at the Global Forum for Health Research's annual meeting in Cairo.

The traditional treatment for the disease, which also contributes to the death of an additional 4 million children annually, is rehydration, but the company is working on drugs that inhibit fluid loss in the intestine, said OneWorld spokesman James Hickman.

[The New York Times]

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