FIGHTING INFECTIOUS DISEASE
At the Gates Foundation, we focus on reducing infectious disease and child mortality in low-and middle-income countries. We support research and development of new tools and strategies around diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, pneumonia, diarrheal diseases, neglected tropical diseases, and polio. Our immunization programs reach children and adults with the vaccines they need to live a life free of preventable disease.
Below is a sampling of immunization-related objects you will find in our gallery.
Creating new vaccines isn’t enough. We also have to make sure that everyone who can benefit from vaccines has access to them.
Bill Gates
LIFE-SAVING VACCINES
Vaccines are among the most successful and cost-effective health tools, saving between 3.5 and 5 million lives a year. Our foundation is a major supporter for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which has vaccinated more than half the world’s children with vaccines such as the ones we feature.
LAST MILE COOLER
This vaccine carrier is a simple, thermally insulated container with coolant packs that keep vaccines cold and protected during the “last mile” until they reach the patient. Used by thousands of health workers in remote areas across the globe, they are the final link in the vaccine cold chain. Carried by workers on foot, bicycle, or on small boats, they must be lightweight and resistant to heat and vibrations. A cooler can store and chill 700 doses of oral polio vaccines for two days.
IRON LUNG
Machines like this saved the lives of thousands of victims of polio—a crippling and deadly disease, spread by a virus, that rose to epidemic proportions in the first half of the 20th century. Polio causes muscle paralysis, and if it spreads to the chest muscles, a patient cannot breathe on their own. The “iron lung” sealed and encased the patient, (leaving their head exposed), while continuous suction from an attached bellows kept them breathing.
Life in an iron lung was difficult—all medical care was conducted through the portholes as the patient lay unmoving. Once a polio vaccine was developed in the 1950s, polio infection fell dramatically. The world is now closer than ever to completely eradicating this deadly disease. Visit endpolio.org to learn more.
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Iron Lungs in a Polio Ward — Image by © Corbis -
Visitors enjoy guided tour, including an iron lung device at the Discovery Center.
