Committed $258.3 million for malaria research and development — one of the largest ever private malaria investments

The Gates Foundation committed $258.3 million for malaria research and development in 2005 — one of the largest single private investments in malaria ever made. The funding supported vaccine development, new drug discovery, insecticide research, and improved diagnostics. Gates argued that malaria was one of the most solvable large-scale health problems given that the parasite had already been eradicated from Europe and North America in the twentieth century, and that the remaining burden was concentrated in low-income countries that lacked the resources to apply existing interventions at scale.