News 26 of 30

 

IDRC is pleased to announce that it has received a project support grant from the Global Health Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (the Foundation).

 

The grant, in the amount of US$997,397 over a three-year period, will support ecohealth research on communicable diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean. This is the first grant IDRC has received from the Foundation.

 

IDRC’s research program on the use of ecosystems approaches to human health in Latin America and the Caribbean focuses on controlling and preventing communicable, vector-borne diseases, notably Chagas disease, dengue, and malaria.

 

The ecology and transmission of these diseases, which disproportionately affect the poor, are closely related to environmental resource mismanagement and social interactions. To overcome them therefore requires integrated environmental, social, and economic approaches and participatory research processes that include communities as well as decision-makers.

 

The Foundation grant will enable IDRC to fund up to eight projects to tackle these diseases, in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank, the Organization of American States, and the Pan American Health Organization. The projects will be selected on the basis of scientific merit and relevance from 11 proposals now being developed by multi-disciplinary teams.

 

More than 50 concept notes were submitted to IDRC following a call issued in August 2006: the 11 notes retained were announced in January.

 

The winning projects will be announced by May 7, 2007.

 

The Foundation grant enables IDRC to double the number of projects that will be funded through this call.

News 26 of 30