Ifakara Health Institute hosts a team of officials from the US-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) in Bagamoyo from June 13 to 15, 2022. The aim of the trip is for BMGF and IFAKARA to discuss potential partnerships in research and development (R&D) of malaria vaccines and monoclonal antibodies.

Head of the Interventions & Clinical Trials Department at IFAKARA, Dr. Ally Olotu, informed that after Bagamoyo, the BMGF team would travel to Ifakara where they’re scheduled to visit various research platforms based there.

“They will have the first meeting in Bagamoyo on Monday 13th of June 2022 and travel to Ifakara in the evening, same day. On 14th of June 2022. they will visit Ifakara before returning to Dar es salaam on the 15th of June,” he said.

IFAKARA Chief Executive Director Dr. Honorati Masanja received the team at Institute’s Clinical Trials Facility on June 13, 2022. The Gates team is interested in bringing medical interventions to the population in need to fight tropical diseases, with malaria being the largest. An investment close to 16 billion US dollars has already been put in the basket in 2021.

The team is working through the Malaria Program under the BMGF with the goal of eradicating malaria by 2040. The team is looking to collaborate with the Ifakara research teams on projects that will help to develop second medical intervention tools.

More photos taken during Bagamoyo visit here.

More: About BMGF
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was launched in 2000 and is reported as of 2020 to be the second largest charitable foundation in the world, holding $49.8 billion in assets.

“We are a nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world,” this is how the BMGF introduces itself in their official website. The primary stated goals of the foundation are to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty across the world, and to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology in the U.S.

More about BMGF here.