Gates Foundation Gives $7M to IDRI

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a three-year, $7 million grant to the Seattle-based Infectious Disease Research Institute to develop improved ways to diagnose and care for patients in Africa infected with visceral leishmaniasis. The infection, caused by a parasite, affects about 500,000 people each year and is deadly in about one in 10 cases when it isn’t detected early enough, IDRI said in a statement.

Author: Luke Timmerman

Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. He has served as national biotechnology editor for Xconomy and national biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke got started covering life sciences at The Seattle Times, where he was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and several other national prizes. Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.